English rule and native opinion in India, from notes taken 1870-74

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^x

ENGLISH RULE

AND

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

PRINTKO BY HALLANTYNB, HANSON AND CO-
BUINBUKCH AND LONDON

ENGLISH RULE

AND

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

FROM NOTES TAKEN 1870-74.

BY

JAMES EOUTLEDGK

LONDON:

TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.

1878.

[All rights reserved. ]

PREFACE.

My object in this work is to try to depict some phases of
Indian life as they actually are, and to make them as
clear as possible to readers who know nothing practi-
cally of India. I can honestly affirm that I could with
far less labour have made a work of a much more preten-
tious character than it has cost me to weave together this
simple narrative of facts. The Indian Administration Re-
ports alone are a mine of figures, which, with very little
trouble, may be adapted to any subject, and used by
any writer. No report, however, would have given me
the material for the pictures which it has been my aim and
wish to present If the reader is interested with those
pictures, I shall rejoice. I shall rejoice still more if I am
fortunate enough to contribute anything tending to the
solution of the great problems — many of them more
social than political — involved in the relations of India
to England.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE OUTER rOUTALS TO INDIA,

PAGE
I

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT AND TUE BED 8EA — ADEN, .

CHAPTER 111.

BOMBAY, AND OVERLAND TO CALCUTTA,

21

CHAPTER IV.

LORD MAYO,

CHAPTER V.

FOREIGN POLICY : AP0HANI8TAN, .

41

CHAPTER VI.

THE PERSIAN GULF — PERSIA, BEL00CHI8TAN, AND KELAT — BURMA
AND TAEKUND — ^THE LOOSHAI, ....

54

CHAPTER Vll.

CAUSES OF DISQUIETUDE WITHIN THE FRONTIERS — THE WAHABEES
— AMEEROODEEN — AMEER KHAN — ^JUSTICE NORMAN — LIAKUT
AU — ^A PRETENDED NANA SAHIB, ....

67

CHAPTER VIII.

INDEPENDENT CHIEFS — SGINDIA AND HOLKAR — SIR DINKUR RAO-
MOHAMMEDAN OPINION — OWALIOR AND JHANSI,

84

viii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

PAGE
HINDOO AND MUSSULMAN FEUDS — EXECUTION OF KOOKAS — THE

8ANTALS— AGRARIAN RIOTS — OUTBREAK IN A GAOL — RIOTS IN

BOMBAY, ....... 96

CHAPTER X.

THE NORTH WESTERN PROVINCES AND THE PUNJAB—SIR HENRY

DURAND, SIR WILLIAM MUIR, AKD SIR JOHN STRACHEY, . I07

CHAPTER XI.

CALCUTTA— ENGLISH AND NATIVE LIFE— HINDOO READINGS — HOS-
PITALS AND ASYLUMS — SEWAGE AND WATER WORKS— THE MINT
— SURVEY DEPARTMENT — CHEENEE BAZAAR — COOLIE EMIGRA-
TION — AN EX-KING, . . . . nS

CHAPTER XII.

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S COUNCIL — FINANCE AND LAW REFORM, 1 27

CHAPTER XIII.

VICE-REGAL CEREMONIAL — THE STAR OF INDIA— FOUR LIEUTENANT

GOVERNORS OF BENGAL, . . . . I40

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FAITHS OF INDIA : HIND00I8M AKD BRAHMOISM— THE MOHAM-
MEDANS— A NAUTCH, . . . . .152

CHAPTER XV.

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS : FROM A SECULAR FOINT OF VIEW, . 167

CHAPTER XVI.

LORD MAYO'S LAST TOUR — LORD NORTHBROOK — IRRIGATION AND

TRADE, ........ 185

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FAMINE OF 1874 IN BENGAL, . . . . 20I

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BRITISH INDIAN ASSOCIATION— THE PERMAVXNT LAND SETTLE-
MENT IK BENGAL— PRISONS AKD POLICE, . 219

CONTENTS, ix

CHAPTER XIX.

PAGE
THE STORY OF OUDE .VND OF THE MUTINY — SOME INDIAN CITIES

EEVISITED, ....... 240

CHAPTER XX.

LUCKNOW DUUINO THE MUTINY AND AFTERWARDS— THE LEASONS

OF 1857, ....... 25s

CHAPTER XXI.

NATIVE WORK — EAGERNESS OF THE PEOPLE FOR EDUCATION —

EMINENT MEN — MATERIAL AND MORAL PROGRESS, 273

CHAPTER XXII.

TO ENGLAND BY BKINDI8I, AND FROM THE HOOOHLY TO THE THAMES, 3OO

APPENDIX, 331

EKRATA.

Page 103, liiic 4, for "Patna'* read "Pubna."
„ 174, „ 21, „ "had told you that"

„ 178, „ 14, ,, ** the tow-rope."

»» '95. i« '3» i» **one other subject" read "There waa one other

subject which. "

„ 214, „ 5, „ "may" read "might."

235» » 6, „ ''they" „ "were."

259. .. ^^) ^ "Greathead" „ "Greathcd."

266, „ 22, S

265, „ 4. „ "cut off the."

267, „ 32, ,, '*Gwalior'8 men" „ "Gvralior men."

268, „ 21, „ "overpouring, then" „ " overiwuring. Then."
271, *» I3f >* " a quiet future " ,, " a great future. "
285, ,, 6, Quotation ends at " cro|w. "
292, „ 24, read " as affording one of the best"

If
tt
»»
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>»
If

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>f
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ENGLISH RULE

AND

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

CHAPTER I.

THE OUTER PORTALS TO INDIA.

In beginning a series of papers for MacmUlarCs Magazine
in the year 1873, I ventured to claim attention, on the
ground that I had had " unusual opportunities for testing,
from a non-oflScial point of view, the opinions of official
men, civU and mUitary, in India, together with perhaps
equally unusual opportunities, from the same point of view,
for testing the drift and tendency of native views and
feeling/' The papers here referred to were written care-
fully, and, though they were not by any means free from
faults, they were as accurate as I could make them, and at
least they were written without any object save that of
stating exact facts, with the view of contributing something,
however small, to the just interests of England and India.
Since then time has passed ; and in the hope that I may
now approach the subject with more matured opinions I
have undertaken to write this book.

That my notes will not rest on a long experience of
India is fully stated in the title-page to such of them as
will appear here. That they rest on exceptional oppor-

A

2 ENGLISH RULE AND

tunities for obtaining accurate information the reader may
perceive in the narrative ; and I can aver that no prejudice
of faith or race, nor any desire to court the favour or hurt
the feelings of any one, wiU colour or distort any record of
what I saw or heard in my intercourse with any class of
men in India. If I fall into the sin of egotism, I can only
plead that, if there is to be any value in what is stated here,
it will be in the way in which the subjects referred to ap-
peared to myself, looking at them from the outside ; not as
a soldier, or a civil ofi&cer, or a missionary, or a merchant^
but as a dispassionate observer, with many and varied
means for testing subjects from many sides, without any-
thing like equal opportunities for making any subject a
special study.

With a view to general interest, I shall endeavour to
throw my notes into a narrative form, dating from some
days before the end of May 1870, when I left London for
India, till the beginning of 1875, when I returned to Eng-
land for the second time. My duties in the first case were
to edit the Friend of India, and to act as Indian corre-
spondent of The Times ; and, in the second case, to seek for
and communicate to The Times the exact truth as to the
famine in Bengal In India, unlike England, there are
occasions when the only reliable information, even on
very simple matters, is of&cial information, and to obtain
this and remain independent is often a hard problem in
journalism. Happily in my own case the whole was
rendered easy by the fact that the Governor-General of
India was a man of such singular nobleness of character
that I am certain he would have scorned to distort a fact
for any purpose, and that his Private Secretary, who repre-
sented him in all cases, was characterised by like high-
mindedness, and like unswerving courtesy. Apart from
this invaluable courtesy, unfettered by any condition, and
sometimes representing a policy which I disputed, I never
owed Lord Mayo any favour. I have now a pleasure in
this fact, when it may devolve on me to say something as a

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 3

respectful tribute to his generous^ high-minded^ and hon-
ourable government.

The world into which I was about to be thrown would, I
knew, differ materially from anything I had known here-
tofore as a journalist or a man. But I knew also that,
both positively and negatively, I had some qualifications for
the duties I had undertaken. I knew, for instance, that I
could not easily be blinded by prejudice ; that I could, and
should, against any man or men, consider every subject on
its merits ; and that I had learned, in the best society of
England, the society of the suffering poor, to feel for the
weak and helpless, without at the same time thinking of
the articles of their creed. In mines and mills, and ship-
yards, and arsenals, and schools, and literary institutions,
in aU parts of the United Kingdom, I had striven to know,
not merely the modes of working and teaching, but the
habits of thought, where thought is freest, and I believe
bravest, among Englishmen.

The overland route to India in May 1870 was by Mar-
seilles. A little later it was, as it still is, by Brindisi. In
the first instance, therefore, I had the opportunity of seeing
France from Calais to Paris, and from Paris to Marseilles ;
in the second, of twice passing through the great cities of
Italy ; and in the third, of making the voyage by Madras
and Ceylon. It is to France, Italy, and the scenes on the
Mediterranean that I refer, in using the unusual term,
"The Outer Portals to India;" while of i^ypt and Aden —
the Bed Sea and the Indian Ocean — I shtJl venture still
further to ask the reader to think as the inner portals, or
the courtyard to the kindred scenes and life of the still
more distant East This view is not put forward as a mere
£euicy, but as representing facts which must, I think, at
some time, in some form, have influenced the thoughts,
and perhaps dreams, of every Anglo-Indian. In the old
days of the Cape route, the voyage involved a process of
education, suited to a people who, with factories on the
Indian sea-board, held, as by a proud prerogative, the ocean

4 ENGUSH RULE AND

highways. The motley cargoes of all sorts and conditions
of men and women, the long irksome voyages, the
quarrels and flirtations, the "runs " on land, and the sights
on sea, involved an experience never again to be lost — ^an
experience, not merely of men of the time of Job Char-
nock, and Clive, and Warren Hastings, but of our own time.
The Cape route is still spoken of by persons, and not neces-
sarily old persons, whose now unvarying path to India is
by the Mediterranean and the Eed Sea.

The newer education may not be better — and some old
Indians say certainly is not better — but at least it is differ-
ent, and in some particulars it is better adapted for a
fitting introduction to an empire whose relation to even
the Mediterranean is much closer than some people
suppose, and whose boundaries are from westward of the
Indus to far beyond the Brahmapootra eastward, and
from the Himalayas to the islands south of Comorin.
When the traveller to India leaves the steamboat at Calais
till he enters it at Marseilles, or Venice, or Genoa, or
Bnndisi, he is a stranger in strange lands. He changes
his money to the coin or the notes current in France,
Grermany, or Italy ; he learns to think with the men of other
nations in their own languages. From the time he embarks
in an English vessel on the Mediterranean till he lands at
Alexandria, he is on a bit of the dominions of the Queen,
and imder the flag of England.

In May 1870 France was in all her glory. She was the
arbiter of nations — ^when she was satisfied Europe was at
peace. Her soldiers had that dashing military swing which
comes from long years of unchecked success. I noticed
a vast change in 1873, landing from Egypt at Brindisi, but
passing through France. The very appearance of the men
was changed. The pride and even self-respect of France
had been shattered, though dancing and other amusements
were unchanged, or were only changed in being wilder and
less restrained. In May 1870 France was very beautiftd
in town and country. The boulevards, the palaces, the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 5

churches, the military displays, the pleasure-gardens and
theatres, all told to the eye, as never can be told to the ear
or in written words, of the splendour of a capital in some
respects unapproachable. It was in the country, however,
that the real charms of France were seen. The placid con-
tent on every face, the cleanliness in every cottage, the
blue blouse and the white cap and apron, the fruitfulness
in orchard, vineyard, and meadow, might elsewhere be
sought for and never found. Of the life of Paris, and
especially of that life at its lowest, the voyager to India
finds many pictures in miniature at Alexandria, Cairo,
Suez, and Ismailia; but the peaceful charms of the country
cannot be transplanted to other lands.

From Paris a railway journey of seventeen hours would,
if time were pressing, convey the traveller to Marseilles and
the blue waters of the Mediterranean. A strangely ancient-
looking place it is, with churches, hotels, shops, markets,
and harbour, apparently belonging, as indeed they do be-
long, to both East and West. It is when one looks back
from, say, the Eed Sea that one perceives in what Mar-
seilles differs from Calais and Lyons, and comprehends
what is meant by France possessing a Mediterranean sea-
board, and a direct communication with the East. A Satur-
day night in the crowded streets of Marseilles reminded
me at first of some, familiar little English seaport towns,
but when I had seen Cairo and Suez, it was not difficult
to perceive in the Saturday evening market at Marseilles,
in the rich profusion of fruits and flowers, in the voluble
saleswomen and the easy laughing crowd of buyers, cer-
tain characteristics — slight but unmistakable — of the East-
em bazaar ; indications of a border land where differences
of race and custom blend — of an approach to the regions
of the Sim.

Early next morning, a beautiful Sunday morning, one
of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's fine vessels
steamed quietly out from docks crowded with men in clean
blouses, ajid women in neat becoming white caps, and

6 ENGLISH RULE AND

lively (you can hardly say merry) children — a pretty,
peaceful, genuinely French scene. In less than three
months from that time the thunderbolt of war had burst
on Europe with terrific fury ; the gay streets and peaceful
villages of France were devastated, and the route to India
was diverted to BrindisL The excitement in Europe was
carried as on the;wind, and perhaps in some senses was in-
tensified on its way to India. It was not difficult to see how
in one week the very tone and character of society in many
nations might reflect the feelings created by a state of war
between any two portions of the virtual federation of
civilised men.

From Marseilles to Alexandria is about 1400 miles as
our vessel ran — ^between the islands of Sardinia and Corsica ;
then closely under Caprera; then, towards evening on Wed-
nesday, in sight of Stromboli; then later through the beau-
tiful Straits of Messina, with Messina itself on the one
hand and Beggio on the other, in both cases lit up as in a
fairy vision, while the boom of a gun over the still waters
told the watchers of the steamboat company on shore that
the customary "All's well " might be telegraphed to Lon-
don. The traveller has before this begun to feel that he
is steaming his way over the most famous of seas. He
may fancy that he looks upon the very waves over which
the armies of Asia were caiiied to uproot or submerge the
fresh yoimg civilisations of Europe, and over which the
smaller but mightier armies of Europe, like streams return-
ing to an ocean bed, were hurled against the decaying civil-
isations or barbarisms of Asia and AMca. It will be
strange if in a Peninsular and Oriental steamboat there is
not some shrewd and well-read man to tell, to those who
are wiUing to listen and learn, of Home and Carthage,
of Greece and Sicily, of Tunis, of the Crusaders, of the
Moors and their tide of conquest, and of the Turks and
theirs, of the Great Desert, of the Numidian horse, of
Nelson and Napoleon, of all the great past, and all the
dread uncertain prospects of the lands that border on this

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 7

storied sea. No vessels in the world convey so many pas-
sengers at once educated and distinguished, and a young
man must be vain and foolish if he arrive at Alexandria,
after his six or seven days' voyage from Europe, without
having found that all that Oxford or Cambridge has taught
him must be re-cast and tested by a new experience. He
may have talked at one hour of the day to an officer from
Peshawur, the next to a man from Madras, or from Ean-
goon, or from the banks of the Indus, or the Ganges, or the
Jumna, or the Brahmapootra; soldiers, civil officers, mission-
aries, chaplains of the Established Church, Jesuits, Presby-
terians, Baptists, merchants, planters. Perhaps the young
voyager addresses a mild, gentlemanly, and thoroughly
polite person, who he afterwards finds has been the guid-
ing spirit of a regiment of Sikhs or Ghoorkas; perhaps
plays quoits with a man who has needed all his skill and
ability to avoid traps and pitfalls as the Political Eesident
at a native court; perhaps asks an opinion from or expresses
opinions to the chief of an English regiment covered with
the laurels of war, or a renowned engineer, or an able
diplomatist, or a person great in knowledge of Calcutta,
Bombay, Madras, Oude, the Punjab, or some far-oflf frontier.
Each possesses some experience by means of which he can
add to the knowledge of other men of whatever age or
length of service; while to the young man — the new-comer
to the East — there is information and matured thought
on every hand. The inquirer may find also, however, that
there is in some cases a vast amount of selfishness to sift
away; that the chief object with many is a successful
career; that some soldiers and civilians perceive only a
continuous and never-ceasing battle for what are called the
plums of the services. When this point has been reached
the traveller may perhaps turn to the missionary or chap-
lain, but only to find that even here he may have turned
in vain for a fair representation of those self-sacrificing qual-
ities which England certainly does send to India. To see
the deeply melancholy side of Indian life, the voyage home*

8 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

ward as well as that outward must be taken; the latter with
its fresh or renovated life, the former with its invalids in
some cases only returning home to die. Nothing sadder
than some phases of Indian life can be found anywhere
among persons who never are likely to need any of those
comforts of life which money can provide, who would be
ashamed to live in any other part of London than the West
End, or to be one iota out of that great order of fashion
which is interpreted and determined by Court dressmakers
and tailors. The sad vein of Indian life is beyond money,
or fashion, or anything that the Queen herself can give or
withhold.

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT AND THE RED SEA— ADEN.

On Saturday morning at day-dawn we saw the low-lying
sandy coast-line of the land of the Pyramids, of Jacob
and Joseph, of early prophets, and of later scholars of
almost equally enduring memory; and while the minds of
some were excited by an unwonted feeling of mingled
delight and awe, others were arranging a sweepstake with
reference to the passing of a certain point of land — a pro-
ject which gave money to the winner.

Among the second-class passengers from Marseilles
there was one poor Arab whom most people had pitied,
and to whom the captain had now and then spoken
kindly. He had been chiefly observed lying near to the
sheep-pens, a silent, dreamy, objectless man, A little
before the lights were put out on Friday night the poor
Arab underwent a transformation. He mounted the bridge,
with his garments girt about him, and his telescope in
hand. On Saturday morning he piloted the vessel into
the Bay of Alexandria. The difference between the de-
portment of an Arab pilot on the Mediterranean, and a
Hooghly pilot from the Sandheads to Calcutta, is immense,
but a pilot is a pilot aU the world over; and the Indian
commissioner, looking through his " binocular " upon the
Egyptian land, was not better fitted for the duties of his
commissionership than that poor Arab was to carry the ship
through those shifting sandbanks. It was but a little scene;
yet it was vastly more instructive than the sweepstake.

Passengers who went onward by the next boat from Suez
had a day in Alexandria, and might see somewhat of caf^s

lo ENGUSH RULE AND

and bazaars, and a varied population — Jew, Turk, Arab,
African, Greek, French, English, Italian; indeed, almost
every race in East and West. You perceive that there
was no error of judgment in the selection of Alexandria as
the centre at once of two civilisations, and of the trade of
many races. You see how naturally the scholars of the
East and the West would find here a common meeting-
ground; how every impulse of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
would make its way to Alexandria as by a common law,
and with electrical sensitiveness.

Eemaining behind the rest of the outward-bound
passengers, and economising time, imder excellent guid-
ance, I saw much of Alexandria at its best and worst.
The reader would pass through Egypt with very mixed
feelings. Wandering through the bazaars, he might see
openly exposed for sale " works of art " at which London
would be amazed if not shocked. Entering a caf^ at the
time of mid-day rest, when every ofi&ce was closed, he would
find merchant-society in repose, over quiet little games of
chance or skill and moderate measures of wine. Visit-
ing the gambling dens and singing rooms at night he
would witness wild orgies for which he might possibly
seek in vain for a comparison. My notes are of this
Saturdaynight, when a merchant fnendgnided me through
all manner of scenes, illustrative of the actual life of
Alexandria. How different from a Saturday night at
Marseilles! Nothing worse perhaps than might be found
in Manchester or Liverpool or Glasgow, but imique in its
mixture of races, and suggesting a careful deportment if
you would escape difi&culty and indeed danger.

Of the hoUowness and hardship, in a double sense, of
the Khedive's government^ there was evidence on every
hand. The victim himself of diplomatic agents and mer-
chants, who contracted and sub-contracted away the very
life-blood of his resources, he found victims in turn in the
masses of the helpless people.

A spirited young Englishman, who had been sent out

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 1 1

from Manchester to superintend the Government cotton
estates on the Nile, found to his surprise that not one of
the men, women, or children of a vast body of " hands "
received any pay whatever, and only a small amoimt of
wretched food. He remonstrated, and was met in this
way: " You agree to do so-and-so if we provide labour, do
you not ? Very good. The provision of labour then is my
business; the execution of work yours. Do not quarrel
with your interest. Let us be friends. You attend to
this, I to that, and so we shall avoid unpleasantness."
The young Englishman, ardent for freedom and fair deal-
ing, was powerless, and he finally left the estate in disgust.
Such are some of the phases of human life which seven
years ago faced an Englishman at Alexandria on his way
to India. Forced labour, and taxes levied even yea]p before
due, were the prominent and all-powerful principles of a
social life, in which men of wealth and European educa-
tion were prominent actors.

I passed the Eliedive walking with one of his sons in
the fine gardens which he hardly can call his own — an
intelligent, yet a bewildered-looking, melancholy man;
wealthy, and yet poor. A fabulous amount of money was
received in I^ypt for cotton during the American War,
and was lost The viceroy had his share, the merchants
theirs, the usurers theirs. Money probably was hidden to
be found no more ; much also went in orgies which ap-
peared as by magic. Egypt was no richer. Twelve years
prior to my visit, Alexandria had not one beer-house ; at
the time of my visit it had fifty, and many of them
possessed "attractions'' of the most questionable kind.
Originating in the cotton trade, the dens increased in
number year by year, till the life of Alexandria might be
said to have undergone one more change, the latest, and
perhaps the most contemptible, of the many changes
which in the course of ages have passed over it. To be
ignorant of whist, or to neglect the fashionable salute,
is barbarous in Alexandria. To grind down the poor

12 ENGUSH RULE AND

people till their life is well-nigh worn out, is fitshionable
and civilised

I went to the English consular court, where a trial of
some interest was going on. I was politely received, and
shown to a seat, but it was immediately found that the
case must be adjourned. Nothing could have been more
polite, or more Egyptian. I went to the English and
American schools, as I did also in Cairo (including an
engineering school near the latter), and there at all events
were glimpses of a nobler, perhaps a regenerating life. The
railway system, too, and the cotton markets were like
fresh leaves on a decayed tree. The worm much trodden
upon at times turns. The merchant finds, for instance,
that if he wishes to discharge a vessel there is a virtual
trades union to prevent him doing so by any but his own
regularly engaged men. Here, for the moment, the weak
become strong. The sting, however, is only skin deep.
The European is in most cases free to do almost anything.
At this time he paid no taxes, save one which he had him-
self made for his own protection; and if he wished to vex
the Government to the heart, he could begin, or threaten
to begin, a newspaper, and demand his own price for its
suppression. This skeleton picture might be filled up
with incidents illustrative of the still-existing plague of
flies, of the unending cry for baksheesh, of the ever-
present donkey and donkey-boy. Of such the reader may
learn much in the books of the records of many observers
of Eastern life. One note, however, I cannot pass. Stand-
ing at the foot of Pompey's Pillar with my friend, who
spoke Arabic, a littie Arab girl drew to us, and looked
wistfully in our faces. My firiend said: "Do you know
who made this?*' — ^the pillar. "Yes, very well; he lives
in the next village." " Go and bring him, and you shall
have baksheesh." " I cannot to-day, for he is from home,
but I can to-morrow." The poor littie romancer re-
ceived her baksheesh. She viewed the beautiful pillar
as one of the gods which foolish men in black coats

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 13

came to worship, and as the attraction for everlasting
baksheesh.

In Cairo the scene changes to one of the most Oriental
of cities. I had a letter of introduction to a gentleman,
whom I found early in the morning sitting on a second
story verandah, in a narrow street, across which higher
still was drawn a sim-blind of many colours. He wore
a pair of loose trousers, a shirt, and a pair of slippers —
nothing more. On the opposite side of the street, and
also on a verandah, within speaking distance, were several
ladies, ol^and young, drinking their coffee in similarly
light attire. There was no impropriety. It was custom,
stronger than written law. Beneath were camels, drome-
daries, donkeys, and goats, intermingled with a crowd,
dense as a sea, of people of many races. A cup of strong
Mocha coffee, imsweetened and without milk, is a luxury
everywhere offered to a visitor in Egypt ; and though its
appearance is not in its favour, it is infinitely preferable
to the English glass of sherry. Of the missionary schools,
and the noble educational work of two generous English
ladies, much has been written. Of the palace, the slave
market, the petrified forest, and other of the " sights " of
Cairo, I have little to say that would be worth printing.
Of the dark skins, gleaming eyes, jabbering tongues, and
lively costumes in the crowded streets, one might write
a fairy tale ; and fairy tales will be written of them while
Eastern and Western life remain what they are, and wliile
the men of the West continue to find their way eastward
in the paths of these old civilisations.

One sight, however, cannot be passed over, any more
than it can be effaced from the memory of especially any
one who afterwards visits the TSj at Agra. The Tdj is an
Indian tomb, the part conception of a Western artist. The
Pyramids are Egyptian tombs, solid, scientific, endurable as
the old culture of Egjrpt, and significant as its embalming of
the dead. After a delightful night drive, partly over what
I afterwards found to be soft velvet grass, beautifully green,

14 ENGUSH RULE AND

I climbed the Great Pyramid at three o'clock in the morn-
ing, and waited for the sunrise on Cairo and the desert. At
a little distance was the dumb Sphinx, in the face of
which some have seen such remarkable expression, and in
which others have declared they could find no expression
whatever. The dumb, perplexing, voicef ul, eternal thing !
The expression doubtless depends greatly on the surround-
ings and on the mystery in which the story is enfolded,
and this becomes apparent when one afterwards compares
both with other stone faces and scenes, dissimilar in much,
yet akin. From the pyramid I looked upon the minarets,
fortifications, cupolas, and dark cypresses of Cairo, gradually
distinguishable as the day began to dawn, and telling of a
great city awakening to daily life, while the silvery Nile,
glistening like a bright long line of light and life, carried
the mind far away through the ruins of great cities into
regions of oblivion, and to an imagined day-dawn of his-
tory. I had seen the sun rise in many different places,
and I subsequently saw it rise in many more on sea and
land, from mountain and plain, from palki and dak-ghany
and railway carriage, and from the port-holes and the decks
of ships; but the pictures of the English Bible, woven into
English life, compel one to see much more than appeaxs to
the natural eye in a sunrise in Egypt. I can recollect as if
it were yesterday the sudden appearance, almost with the
first golden rays of the sun, of a line — about a score per-
haps—of camels on the distant horizon, like a mirage in
the desert, lonely, misty, almost as of ghostland, recalling
stories of the patriarchs going down into Egypt, and of
the flight of Joseph and Mary to save the young Child's
life. No other European was present, and having silenced
the clamourers for baksheesh it was easy to sit and dream.
It was difficult, however, to connect the old Scripture
times with Napoleon's search here for an Eastern empire,
with our own highway to India, with the English names
cut on the stone on which one sat^ and on the stones
around, or, worst of all, with an English handbill adver^

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 1 5

tiaing English Mr Somebody's bitter ale. Bitter ale on
thia monument of ages ! The unlucky bill jarred greatly
with the glory of tiie patriarchs — of those times when
Egypt itself was young. The drive back to Cairo was
beautifuL A vast number of poor people, who were asleep
on the wayside when we passed some hours earlier, now
formed part of a great scene of life and labour, and one
or two English parties driving out to the Pyramids seemed
like elements of an altogether difTerent creatioa It ought
also to be interesting to all men to know that the Khedive
had at this time an opera in all its glory, to the great de-
light of a few Western people, and to the extreme horror
of all the gravest and best old Arabs.

A night run over the desert, not now, as in earlier years,
with lugg^e on camels and passengers in vans, but by
railway, with a supper and cool claret at Zagizig, half way
over, carries the traveller to Suez and the Eed Sea. The
voyage from Suez to Aden occupied approximately about
the same time as that from Marseilles to Alexandria, and
during the greater part of the time with like-recurring
scenes, connected with aU that is best known and all that
is most mysterious in history. At the head of the Eed
Sea, from the Gulf of Suez, a scene of rare beauty is at
times presented. The most beautiful to me was a scene
at day-dawn in 1874, while approaching from the contrary
direction the mouth of the canaL " Perhaps," my note,
afterwards given in ifacmillan's Magazine, said, " no day-
dawn in the world surpasses in beauty that which may
be seen in the passage of the Straits of Jubal into the
Gulf of Suez. There are no richer tints on the heather
of Scotland or Cumberland, or on the vines of Italy and
France. You know, too, that the ' Sinaitic Eange ' on the
one hand, and the African land on the other, represent a
great gulf, frequently passed but never filled up so as to
form a permanent highway for human life. There is no
blade of grass iA view ; the beauty consists in the sun's
magical tints on the bleak mountains, now grey, now

i6 ENGLISH RULE AND

golden ; here standing out in bright relief, there deepening
into shade ;- altogether very beautiful when seen on a still
morning over a calm sea. The canal is French, but it is
difficult to think so when you see the number of English
flags in the Gulf and at Port Said. The forms of life,
however, are those of a French colony, with an Arabian
and Egyptian basis, in aU probability stable as the hills,
and with a mixed and lawless population, compared with
which even Alexandria presents many phases of settled
order." Another note says: "I wish some Englishmen
who talk of human progress, of the prospects of sword
being beaten into ploughshare and spear into pruning-hook
aU the world over, could look now and then on these dim
shore-lines and the dimmer populations beyond. I asked
the captain of one vessel on which side of the sea he would,
in case of extremity, prefer to run ashore. He said, * The
African, decidedly.' I put the same question to another cap-
tain, and he replied, ' Well, the Arabian.' Neither had the
remotest idea what would occur in either case, except that,
however solitary the place might be, the ship would in an
hour be surrounded by boats manned by imsparing robbers."
If we consider what the vessels on the Eed Sea repre-
sent of trade and nationality we shall be carried well-nigh
over the world. If we think of what the scenes represent,
we may look in fejicy to Syria and Jerusalem, to Medina
and Mecca, and finally to Aden, and may perceive that the
fibre of connected history is far from worn out as regards
Arabia. A writer, referring to this year's pilgrimages, un-
disturbed even by the war, said : " The pilgrims will take
steamer at Jeddah for the Persian Gulf, Bombay, Calcutta,
Singapore, Penang, Batavia, and some to Zanzibar, for the
south-eastern ports of Africa, and Capetown, while some
will return to the Syrian and North African and Moorish
ports"— a very comprehensive view of the intermingling
of races in the East. On the other side of the Eed Sea
we might follow the Nile from Egypt to the interior of
Africa, and by leaving it at some point for the desert.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 17

might, if we escaped a thousand dangers, emerge on the
bleak sterile shore of Cape Guardafui, the extreme point
to which Africa stretches into the Indian Ocean. The
entire scenes are strangely mysterious to Europe. But
they belong to great histories.

Aden is politically in the Presidency of Bombay. It is
also the visible and real gateway to India. The steamer
to India stops about twelve hours for coal, and the traveller
may see those wonderful tanks which bear witness for
some mighty but now dim civilisation. A British canton-
ment, a few European and Parsee stores on the barren
shore, a strange race of wanderers — Jew, Arab, and African
— and a polyglot race of expert boy divers, who never
seem to grow older, comprise the elements of human life
on this cinder fortress, thrown out, as it were, from the
mainland, and for generations the property of the strongest
hand on the Eed Sea. Here, also, is the converging point
of different streams of commerce, from China, Australia,
Japan, and South Africa, as well as from all the ports of
India. Looked at cursorily, you see the small settlement
engaged in trade ; the garrison, which tries to while away
time in amateur theatricals, or in making shrubs to grow on
hard volcanic cinder, or in watching the vessels homeward
and outward, and in dreaming pleasant dreams of orders
for removal to any place on the face of the earth away
from Aden. You learn that the cinder fortress where the
English flag now flies, 1700 feet above the level of the
sea, marks the site of a city once very important in Arabia.
Looking below the surface you perceive at Aden the tap-
ping, as it were, of an unknown land, wherein feather
merchants and others disappear, at stated times, to return
laden with the spoils of the desert to adorn the bonnets
of ladies in London and Paris. The Jew, too, is here, as
everywhere ; and here, as elsewhere, with all his love for
gain, he keeps his holy day as religiously as in civilised
and safe lands.

At this point, where the swell of the Indian Ocean

B

i8 ENGUSH RULE AND

begins to make itself felt in the Straits of Babelmandeb,
the traveller, who has read, while voyaging from Suez to
Aden, the history, with the maps and charts, of both sides
of the Eed Sea, may vastly extend his range of vision.
If, instead of directing the vessel's head across the Arabian
Sea to Bombay, it were pointed to the northward, the voy-
age would be south and east of Arabia to the head of the
Persian Gulf, passing the land of Oman, the scene of so
many dynastic struggles of late years, the scene, too, of so
many mightier struggles in ages gone. You know that if
you went far enough over the land westward you might
arrive at Mecca; that northward are Persia and the Caspian,
north-eastward (over the gulf) Beloochistan, and further
north Afghanistan; with the lines of the Indus on the west
of India, from north to soutL You begin now to compre-
hend more fully the relation that Aden bears at once to
Arabia, to Persia, and Oman, to Afghanistan and Beloo-
chistan, and to India. In India itself you will hear much of
the Wahabee (the Mohanmiedan Puritan) sect, which has
extended its teachings and influence from Arabia to the
most southern and eastern parts of Bengal and Madras,
and you will have no difficulty in perceiving how easily
and naturally the doctrines and teachers might pass from
Nedj to the Persian Gulf and to the Indus. These facts
may appear more clearly in a later chapter, but they are
worth noting here in approaching the last portal of the
great empire of England in the East.

If, instead of keeping the vessel's head along the coast-
line of Arabia, you ran southward, along the African coast
past Cape Guardafui, you would come to Zanzibar. Look-
ing, then, to the dynastic relation of Zanzibar and Oman,
the ideas gathered on the Mediterranean and the Bed Sea
might now be aptly and naturally extended, over the sea,
from Aden, southward to Abyssinia, and to where, we are
told, we should find the sources of the Nile, and northward,
through Arabia, till we arrived at the lands occupied by
Bussia in Asia.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 19

When people say that the distances are too vast, and
the deserts and steppes too dry, or bleak, or barren and
desolate to be traversed, let us remember that they are so
traversed continually in aU directions by the men of the
East ; that what we call vast distances are but so many
hundred different resting-places to persons who carry their
homes with them. Let us remember, also, that the dis-
tances have been traversed by armies. When we hear
of the ocean that separates Oman from Zanzibar, we
may perceive that that ocean is made light of by boat-
men ignorant of the locomotive uses of steam. Then we
may see not merely what relation Aden bears to aU the
orders of men from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Bengal
and to the Cape of Good Hope, but also how Eastern races
are knit together, so that an idea thrown out in the desert
or on the moimtain top may extend over thousands of miles
and influence many millions of men. Strangely mingled
thoughts may now range over all history, from Nebuchad-
nezzar to Eobert Clive, or from Abraham in Egypt or
Moses on Sinai to the landing of Syud Toorkee a few
years ago in Oman. Even such scraps of history as that
the Queen of Sheba went from the ends of the earth to
hear the wisdom of Solomon, may assist us to comprehend
the relation of Eastern lands in old times and under very
imfavourable conditions for travelling. The Queen of
Sheba had some weary journeys, no doubt, but she was
also doubtless a patient traveller, as behoved a daughter
of the sunny East.

The importance attached by England to Aden was shown
when in 1874 a Turkish force, advancing on Nedj and
other parts of Arabia, approached too near to our allies the
Sheikhs in the neighbourhood of the cinder fortress. A
very stem mandate went from London to Constantinople,
and the least hesitation on the part of the Turks would
have led to English shot and shell being thrown among
the invaders. Equally strong evidence of the same fact
was given earlier, when by an act of sharp practice, which

20 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

at one time would have led to war, all English officer seized
upon the island of Perim in the very teeth of a French
man-of-war sent out to make the seizure for France. Perim
might have. become a rival fortress to Aden, and it was
not merely seized, but was also held in defiance of all
diplomacy by the British Government.

If the voyager in the monsoon season is very much in-
terested in all this, he may not observe that while the coal
is being taken into the vessel by one set of men, another
set are making aU snug on deck and aloft for the big
waves of the Indian Ocean. Better, however, to forget the
waves, which may not be so easily forgotten a few hours
later, than miss the lesson which the central position of
Aden, and its curious relation to so many different elements
of peace and war in ancient and present times, ought to
suggest. I do not think this fact is commonly seen in its
many-sided meaning. Every one, of course, knows that
Aden is important as a coaling station. Independent of
that, however, Aden has a great political significance. I
do not mean for the defiance of enemies, but as a visible
representation. of power, on the side of peace and order, on
sea and land, from the Gulf of Suez to Bombay.

K'

CHAPTER III.

BOMBAY, AND OVERLAND TO CALCUTTA.

The first impression received of Bombay after the voyage
firom England is not easy to represent on paper. The
splendid bay, covered with shipping, may perhaps be entered
a second time without emotion, but hardly so the first time
by an Englishman. After travelling over 6000 miles through
the lands and along the shores of strangers, here is English
life, strong, intellectual, and self-reliant; aGovernmenthouse,
a fort, military lines, law courts, a custom-house, colleges,
markets of uncommon excellence, European residences
skirting carriage-drives open to the sea, jetties and wharves,
churches and chapels, reading-rooms and libraries, clubs,
cotton and other mills — everything, in fact, of all that
Englishmen have accustomed themselves to term neces-
saries of civilised (meaning English) life. With an inland
trade ever increasing as the railway system is extended,
and a direct communication with England by the canal,
Bombay has put forward substantial claims to become the
capital of India, Calcutta being dismissed as too far away
from England and as unfit for European residence all the
year through, and the old capitals of the Moguls as only
suited to a purely military people, possessing no basis on
the sea. Nothing of all this, it is true, shakes the imperial
position of the great city on the Hooghly, while Allahabad
is fast becoming, if it has not become, the military capital
of India. Yet there is something in Bombay that is all its
own, and which at least gives it an indisputable right to be
called the commercial capital of the East.
I saw Bombay under three different aspects — first, when

22 ENGLISH RULE AND

I was entirely unacquainted with India, while the French
and German armies were approaching each other for the
death-struggle; next, when I had been in India long
enough to have known some representative men, and to
have studied as closely as I could many subjects of the
thoughts and acts both of English and native people;
and again, on my way to the scenes of the Bengal famine.
On the first occasion I saw the Temple of Elephanta, and
I had no such favourable opportunity of seeing it again.
The caves are on an island three or four miles in circum-
ference, and from four to six miles from the Bombay shore.
If the reader can imagine such an island, formed of two hills
with a narrow valley between them, ending in a rugged
circumscribed gorge clad with dense verdure and leading to
the sacred caves, a fair general idea will be had of the
approach to this ancient temple. The gorgeous rays of the
sun dance outside on bush and tree ; inside, the rocks drip
with water, and from sombre recesses or elevations Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva in various incarnations, look down upon
you with strangely human eyes, albeit eyes of stone. Years
later, and after visiting many kindred places, I w€is still
able to recall some of the faces at Elephanta, and compare
them with some in the Great Fort at Gwalior — a proof of
the impression made by them on at least one mind.

The missionary institutions of Bombay are almost as well
known to intelligent people in England as the universities
of Oxford and Cambridge ; and it is curious, therefore, to
record ^ that for fifty years after the cession of the island
to England by Portugal (1662) there was not in the place
either a church or a chaplain, and that no complete trans-
lation of the Bible iato the Mahratta language existed prior
to 1847. The basis of the population on this side of India
is Hindoo, and largely Mahratta, but there are also num-
bers of Mohammedans, with Jains, Bheels, and others, and
surmounting all, the able, astute Parsee — ^merchant, banker,
scholar, millionaire, and as devout a disciple of Zoroaster,

1 Shening's " Protestant Missions." Trttbnep h Co.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 2^

and as opposed to Christianity, as ever his fathers were.
" Ten papers and magazines *' (Mr Sherring says, writing of
1843) "ill ^^'^ around Bombay, and armed with heathen
learning and the most approved weapons of infidelity," were
arrayed against Christianity. In many cases the Parsee is
a polished gentleman, in many more a man of great enter-
prise and capacity in trade. I found him engaged at Aden
and at the mouth of the Mutlah river, many miles below
Calcutta; in all cases the head and front of commercial
enterprise. I saw also at least one indication that he
will occasionally do much for an English title ; but apart
from this, his charities are often munificent. Perhaps
there are no persons in India who owe more to British rule
than the Parsees, and perhaps (though they can, and some-
times with reason, be very haughty to individual English-
men) there are no persons in India who know better the
value of that rule, or who return for it a more unhesitating
loyalty. Directing their energies to banking, manufacture,
and trade, the Parsees preserve an unwonted degree of
independence, and are in the main valuable citizens.

From Bombay to Calcutta is a distance of 1400 miles,
and involves a railway joum^ of a little more than sixty-
five hours, which a sleeping-carriage and a retiring-room,
with plenty of water, are necessary to render endurable.
The journey may be almost said to begin with the ascent
of the Gh&ts, which from first to last present successive
scenes of indescribable grandeur. A fresh new picture
appears at every turn of ravines that seem interminable,
and in ascents and descents along the sides of rugged pre-
cipices, and into deep chasms, and on curves which are Uke
a labyrinth. Here and there the line seems decidedly at
an end. Yet still the engine goes slowly on, puffing and
panting, amid such a mass of verdure as few persons
can hope to see more than once in a lifetime. For more
than an hour you climb and re-climb, by a sinuous path,
broken by tunnels which make the scenery all the grander,
till at last the giddier part of the work is done, and the

24 ENGUSH RULE AND

line is on comparatively safe ground I have heard that
these are not the grandest of the Indian gh&ts, but they
are exceedingly grand.

At Jubbulpore most people stop to see certain ruins, and
the picturesque Nerbudda waterfalls, and the much-talked-
of marble rocks. The place for miles around abounds with
objects of interest. You l&nd, also, about here, that the
scenery is fast changing to tamer hills, which long before
the journey terminates give place to flat plains. Six hun-
dred of the fourteen hundred miles have been passed, with
fresh scenes of beauty by night and day. You sleep, and
awake to see the dark shadows on the hills, and to feel the
intense loneliness which is only broken by the bark of the
jackal or the whoop of the night-bird, and by the heavy
breathing of the steam-engine, wending its way through
sombre gloomy districts that seem to give back silence
for silence to the bright stars overhead. You sleep again,
and awake with the first streaks of dawn, and watch till
the grey tints broaden into amber and gold — ^into a myriad
lines of beauty. Of the changing features of such a jour-
ney an artist might write with rapture, if indeed he could
find words in which to picture what he saw.

I once watched the approach of a magnificent thunder-
storm, and noted the rapid succession of changes, ending in
piles upon piles of big clouds rolling onward like great
mountains in motion, and with deep caverns lit up by
magnificent forked lightning. A couple of hours earlier
a bit of exquisite cloudland had appeared to the westward,
soft, bright, and with every conceivable variety of colour,
and peaceful as an EngUsh landscape on a Sunday morn-
ing in spring. In the east the black clouds were gathering
grandly, and the debatable cloudland between was of a
dull, leaden colour. The bright colours gradually and
speedily gave place to the leaden ones, and the leaden ones
to the black mountain piles. Then we had the thunder-
storm, which, terrible as it was, one almost regretted to
lose. To fall asleep in one kind of scenery — say a moun-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 25

tain district — and awake in another — say on a vast plain —
is at least noveL To awake just before dawn of day, and
watch for the first light in the east while the steam-engine
is pushing steadily along its way, is a treat that money
might fail to buy.

At Allahabad, the capital of the North West Provinces,
and the great arsenal of India, the journey to Calcutta may
be said (speaking generally) to have been half made. It is
a city doubly sacred — to the Hindoo, because it lies at the
confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna, both sacred;
to the Mohammedans, because it was named by the great
Akbar, Allah-abad, the city of Allah. In its old to\f n may
be found one of the most shifting, and, viewing it early one
morning at a later period, I thought one of the most fero-
cious populations in India. The fort and arsenal are
perfect for war. The European quarter, the " Station," is
beautifully laid out, and admirably tended. Straight wide
roads are everywhere lined with trees, interspersed with
often elegant and mostly pretty bimgalows. Here you may
learn, more truly perhaps than in any other place, what
is meant by Englishmen in India "standing on guard."
Elsewhere, as Agra, Delhi, and Lucknow, there may
be a varnish as of the bazaar. Here there is a clear
field, and a certain something that conveys the idea of
a military force polished into an unsurpassed weapon of
war.

The fortress, greatly prized by Akbar, was wrung from
him a short time before his death by the unnatural rebellion
of his son. Then, while Clive was advancing to Plassey,
Allahabad was seized by the Nawab of Oude "for the
Emperor." It was afterwards ceded to the Mahrattas,
Warren Hastings alone demurring in the face of his enemies
in the CounciL At the end of the eighteenth century it
came to us by treaty, and it is not likely to again pass
very readily into other hands. Welliugton saw its military
value with unerring certainty, and it is on record that Lord
EUenborough, who, whatever might be his faults, was pre-

26 ENGUSH RULE AND

eminently loyal to the great duke, strove to give the view
effect. The place of this city and fortress in the Mutiny of
1857 we shall see in a later chapter.

With Allahabad as a centre, many great cities of the
Ganges and the Jumna may be visited, but to all save
Benares we shall come in another way, and to Benares
alone I shall refer here as diverging from the main line to
Calcutta. At a short distance from Allahabad is the rail-
way station of Mogul Serai, and six miles further you
reach the side of the Ganges, opposite to " the Sacred City,"
the Jerusalem and Mecca of the Hindoos. Leaving Allah-
abad on a beautiful evening, I arrived at the Ganges at
nightfall, and finding that the bridge had been swept away
by the flood, crossed by the river boat. Here, by night
or day, is a scene in many respects unique among, one
may safely say, all the scenes of earth. Built on a beauti-
ful bend of the river, Benares may be said to form a semi-
circle — an amphitheatre — about four miles in length.
From end to end of this amphitheatre is presented a suc-
cession of temples and palaces rising from the river's
bank, first by steps — bathing gh3.ts — then house above
house, and temple above temple, each nestling in its grove
or little forest of beautiful green trees, like a low-lying
Alpine village, but with incomparable architecture, and
such a mass of daily life as no city of Europe ever knew.

The river is literally covered with boats, as the gh&ts
and river banks are with boatmen, pUgrims, devotees,
bathers, sleepers, bargainers, and pleasure seekers. In a
boat on the river in the early morning the scene, in one
respect, but with a mighty difference, is like that from the
railway between the old and new towns of Edinburgh.
But then the old or new parts of Benares are palaces and
temples, set in frames of rich foliage, and lit up as in a sea
of glory, or thrown into shade, by a brilliant sua Com-
merce, religion, and pleasure intermingle beneath the
monuments of faith and of ages. Within the narrow
streets of the city are hosts of people carrying their offer-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 27

ings of flowers to lay upon the altars or to throw into the
sacred wells. Wild devotees sit in sUent contemplation,
never changing their position from day to day or from year
to year. Hosts of native beggars appear at every turn ;
and at every turn, too, you run the risk of stumbling against
some quiet, listless, Brahminical bull, which is sacred.
A small stone pillar marks the spot where a woman
was burned with her dead husband in the days before
Suttee was trampled down ; and when you have seen one
such pillar you will perceive that it is one of a host,
abounding in many streets, fearful monuments of the past.
The pilgrims laugh and joke beside the sacred wells,
as they drop in their offerings of flowers. Women and
men, old and young, laugh as they worship, and worship
as they bathe. The air is laden with devotion. Eajahs and
wealthy men of all castes have houses in Benares, that they
may receive the blessing of the sacred city. People, rich and
poor, go there and often crawl there to die. The gods
are everywhere, and they are legion. A short distance
outside the city there is a monkey temple, dedicated to
thousands upon thousands of sacred monkeys — sacred be-
cause the great god Eama in his day of tribulation was
aided by an army of monkeys. Far and wide on the roads
around the temple the apes roam at will, protected by
every faithful Hindoo.

Yet, dose to all this strange medley of worship, there
may be found native presses, and a native literature, acute,
clever, and characterised by absolute incredulity where
English faith is in question. Close to it, also, are power-
ful and efiective missions ; Mr Sherring, who has told a
strange history in his " Sacred City of the Hindoos," and
another in his "Hindoo Tribes and Castes," and Mr
Griffith, who has translated the great Hindoo epic, the
" Bamayana," are among the workers in Benares. And if
the traveller care to climb a narrow crooked stair to a room
like a garret, he will find shawls and other garments of the
costliest of known workmanship. He wiU not, I think,

28 ENGLISH RULE AND

leave Benares without perceiving that a very subtle intel-
lect and a cunning power of handicraft pervade and domi-
nate those great masses even of the apparently idle and
holiday people.

Having learnt somewhat of the living Present in Benares,
I went a few miles from the city to see one of the greatest
monuments of the Past, the Buddhist ruin of Sdmath,
where it is quite possible to remember that " Benares," as
Mr Sherring says, "has had a foremost place in Indian
history for at least 2500 years," and that "when Babylon
was struggling with Nineveh for supremacy, when TjO'e
was planting her colonies, when Athens was growing in
strength, before Rome had become known, or Greece had
contended with Persia, or Nebuchadnezzar had captured
Jerusalem, she had already risen to greatness, if not to
glory." Slowly has Europe learned, from the researches of
patient and able men, that in the far-off ages of which we
know so little as regards India there must have been a
race that excelled in the power to work history in stone,
and a race which, possessing the mighty power of letters,
represented natural scenes and human feelings and know-
ledge in written words.

Sakya Muni, the first Budha, is believed to have
" begun to turn the wheel of the law, to preach the famous
doctrines of Dharma and NirvSiua at Samdth," in the sixth
century before Christ Long ages, however, before this
the Brahmins had made Benares their sacred city, and
while the Buddhists, essentially fervent and missionary,
were sending out their teachers eastward, the men of the
older faith concentrated their attention on the victory of
their creed in India. A great war — ^a war of giants and of
generations — ensued, and the Buddhists felL When the
crisis arrived, they buried their images side by side at
Sarnath, hoping beyond doubt for the restoration which
never came. The images were exhumed not so very long
ago by Western hands. The defeated religionists drifted
northward to Nepal and beyond the Himalayas, but chiefly

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 29

eastward to Burmia and China, where a still mightier
empire was in store for them. That man, by earnest con-
templation, might rise into the Divinity, which has no
separate individual existence, was the keystone of the faith
of Sakya Muni,^ but the success of the teaching beyond
question rested mainly on the self-denying lives of the
teachers. Of what was done at Samath, and how life was
enjoyed, or passion conquered there, we know far less than
we do of the same facts in relation to Fumess or Fountains
Abbey; but as we know from inference that the Eoman
Catholic priests did endure privation even before the
Seformation, and much more so afterwards, so do we know
that sacrifice and conquest of self were at the foundation of
the teaching of Sakya Muni It is so to this day in
Burma, China, and Ceylon ; the Buddhist monk, as we shall
see, the instructor of the people, not merely cannot marry,
but must not even receive payment, beyond his food, day
by day, for his labour. All who have read rightly the
history of Buddhism wiU agree that its rise and pro-
gress are among the most marvellous facts in the history
of men. In this way, beyond the mere comparison of dates
and inscriptions, thoughts will arise at Simath, of the
struggles of creeds, and of men, in those far-off times, and
of how great landmarks were established or removed.

In leaving Allahabad for Calcutta, the chief interest of
the journey over India may be deemed at an end. Seram-
pore is about thirteen miles up the Hooghly, on the
Howrah sida Barrackpore, where the Governor General
has a house and a fine park, is directly opposite to it, on
the Calcutta side. It was at Barrackpore that Job Char-
nock made his favourite home, and to natives of India the
placf is " Channuk " to this day. Here also is Lady Can-
ning's tomb, sacred to all save Vandal Englishmen, who
have defaced it for relics. Many wearied chief rulers of
India have driven along the road from Calcutta to Barrack-
pore, past the great arsenal of Dum Dum, and through

1 Sherring's "Sacred CMty of the Hindoos/'

30 ENGLISH RULE AND

picturesque villages, in search of solitude and rest And if
the road was deemed too hot or dusty, or otherwise un-
pleasant, there was the river, and a yacht constructed for
the comfort of one who ruled over millions of men. The
cantonment, with its church and schools, and its bungalows,
especially pretty when in the morning or at eventide the
verandahs are occupied by ladies and children, has all the
advantages of Calcutta, with all the pleasures that can be
eked out of an Indian country life. Vast droves of ele-
phants, for labour in peace or war, and often marshalled by
the road-side, a well-kept menagerie, and regimental bands
available for amusements, fill up the picture of the outer
life of Barrackpore.

There was a time when English rulers looked angrily
from Barrackpore to the place over the river, where, under
the Danish flag, three poor English Baptist missionaries
had found a refuge fix)m the hard laws against interlopers
of the East India Company. The chapel, and college, and
house of " Carey, Marshman, and Ward " remain. Their
press and their newspaper were recently removed to Cal-
cutta. To preach in India with unlicensed lips was
shocking to the Company. To print, however, was much
worse; and the Council at Fort WiUiam and the House
in Leadenhall Street were strangely disturbed by the intru-
sion of these three men. The press became a real power,
and the missionaries substantial facts in social life. At
last the Government held out the branch of peace, and
accepted the intruders as allies. Here, where the three
friends laboured, they died and were buried. A little
lower on the river there is an old ruined pagoda, in which
Henry Martjm found rest for his ardent spirit, and a cool
retreat for his studies. It is still "Henry Martyn's
Pagoda." At the "Mission" at Serampore Havelock wor-
shipped, was baptized, and was married. The old walls of
the Danish forts still stand, a monument of the protection
given by Denmark to English missionaries disowned and
threatened by England.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 3 1

A few miles higher on the Serampore side of the river
is the French settlement of Chandemagore, still essentially-
French, with governor and " garrison," laws and customs,
as marked and decided as if France were still an Indian
power. When a Calcutta man seeks a very short holiday,
his thoughts instinctively turn to Chandemagore, where he
finds a comfortable hotel, managed by a lady (in direct
contrast to Indian custom), seats by the river-side, well-
trimmed walks, and all those little signs of care and super-
vision by which France asserts her superiority, go where
she may, and which Englishmen at times affect to despise.
Looking for instance at Serampore and at Chandemagore, a
stranger would say that the residents in the latter had the
permanent vested interest, and the former not a liferent
in India. Even Barrackpore does not give the same idea of
settled life that is given by Chandemagore.

Higher still on the river, and about twenty-eight miles
from Calcutta, is the notable chief town of a great district,
Hooghly, which may be said to include Chinsura. The
history of Hooghly records some episodes of a dark kind.
About I OCX) Portuguese were massacred there by Shah
Jehan, their fleet of shipping destroyed, and a flourishing
settlement turned into a desert. At a later period the town
was burnt by an English admiral, and later still it fell
before the avenging arms of Clive. It is now a remarkable
centre of intellectual life, both native and European, and
has been the temporary home of some able Englishmen
engaged in educational work. By asking the reader's atten-
tion, even thus generally, to the route from Bombay to the
river Hooghly, one cursory view of certain great features of
the country may, I think, have been obtained. The appli-
cation of the facts will be when we view the same country
from other stand-ground, as, for instance, from the line of
the Granges.

CHAPTER IV.

' LORD MAYO.

In July 1870 Lord Mayo and his Government were at
Simla for the hot season, after the manner of Indian
Governments, and Calcutta professed to be very nearly
disloyal. Why, it was asked for the hundredth time,
should the Grovemment be enjoying life in the Himala-
yas while merchants, missionaries, and officers civil and
military, were compelled to stay on the plains all the year
through ? Did not Lord Canning remain in Calcutta in
a crisis, as previous rulers had all the year through? — and
was not this an exceptional year, financially? There is no
doubt that the year was an exceptional one. A new
system of finance, by which Lord Mayo rightly believed
that he had put an end to deficits, included tlie income
tax, which had been considerably increased, instead of
being deemed a tax on the Mutiny of 1857, and re-
pealed, as Mr Wilson had led people to expect it would,
when once the mutiny costs and responsibilities had been
met. The tax was anathematised by nearly all wealthy
persons, European and Native. The injuries it inflicted
on the poor had not at this time been brought to light
The Bengal landowners complained that the tax, in com-
mon with all like taxes, was an infringement of the perma-
nent land-settlement of Lord Comwallis. Then Mr J.
Fitzjames Stephen, legal member of Council, was engaged,
it was said, in making nobody knew what changes in the
law. The people of India dreaded to see their old laws
and customs set at nought, while Englishmen saw, in the
" amendment, consolidation, and codification of the law,"

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 33

the absolute certainty that they would lose many " privi-
leges of Englishmen/' and be made amenable in many
more cases than heretofore to the authority of native
judges. All manner of sinister influences were asserted to
be at work to further the ends of despotic government.

Why discuss these questions at Simla when the mer-
cantile members of Council, who alone had any claim to
be termed popular representatives, were bound to be in
Calcutta? To one who had not seen the Governor
General's Council, there seemed in these complaints some-
thing like the certain sounds of patriotism; and though
it did appear a little absurd to think of Lord Mayo as the
head and front of a conspiracy against his own Govern-
ment, and as assisted by acute pei*sons, who imposed upon
him and were imposed upon by him, this was the picture
one was expected to accept as a fair representation of
Indian government. The popular feeling promised itself
a great revenge. When Ijist in Calcutta Lord Mayo had
delighted in spending money freely, that Calcutta might
rejoice in balls, dinners, garden parties, and concerts.
Calcutta would this time revenge upon Lord Mayo the
income tax, by refusing to attend his festivities. As if
Calcutta ever could, with a female Calcutta in the back-
ground, have earnestly taken such a resolution ! In the
midst of all this it became known that Lord Mayo in-
tended, before returning to the capital, to take a month's
tour in Bajpootana — " delaying, you see, as long as possible,
the dreaded arrival in Calcutta." Of course it was all
great nonsense. The people who would liave groaned in-
stead of cheering when Lord Mayo crossed the Hooghly
from Howrah, were only like the fabled fly on the carriage
wheeL All reasonable people were convinced, that liow-
ever the Government had erred, its aims were in the main
single, and that the Viceroy's own motives, and those of,
for instance, such men as Major General Norman and Mr
Stephen, were beyond dispute.

That Lord Mayo was extremely sensitive no one who

c

34 ENGLISH RULE AND

watched his course of procedure could doubt In durbar
he had an imposing presence. On horseback, chasing the
wild boar, he was said to be like a boy at play. In his
relation to foreign chiefs he was firm and conciliatory; at
liis desk a downright hard worker; in his hatred of oppres-
sion and wrong-doing, inexorable; but amid it all he was,
I think, very sensitive. I once heard him attempt in
public to tell a funny story, and entirely lose the point of
it, simply because sensitiveness (not timidity) for the
moment overmastered him. Perhaps his well-known
break-down in the House of Commons arose from the same
cause. It was impossible to doubt, after the end of that
cold season of 1870-71, that Lord Mayo really did dislike
the thought of the inevitable winter residence in Calcutta.
But the idea of Lord Mayo fearing anybody, or any
number of bodies, was preposterous. From the day of his
appointment he had given his entire heart to his duties.
He began (as Dr Hunter has admirably shown) to study
India in London, continued the study in France and
throughout the voyage, and only ended it on that fatal
day at the Andamans. It was simply that he felt, as a
generous man may feel, that he had been unkindly treated
where he had deserved to have his motives and acts
generously construed, and that, explain as he might, there
were still people to charge him with a Machiavellian
policy.

With some again he had become unpopular, because he
could on occasions swoop down rigorously on a man or an
office whose affairs would not bear investigation. Others,
who on his arrival in Calcutta had supposed him pleasantly
ductile, and had found him as granite when they had
attempted to mould him, discovered in him the one sin
that cannot easily be stated in terms, but which can never
be forgiven. Then the religious grooves in which Lord
Mayo moved were different from those of Lord Lawrence.
I do not say they were better. I would be ashamed even
to hint or suggest a thought of disrespect towards the hero

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 35

of the Punjab. They were simply different, while they
were equally honourabla Lord Lawrence, who had passed
through terrible scenes, inclined to persons whose devo-
tional habits were akin to those of his own noble brother
and of Sir Henry Havelock. Lord Mayo was devotional
in quite another way. He took his prayer-book in his
hand, and walked quietly with his wife to the English
church at Barrackpore or Simla, said his prayers, and re-
turned home. What he might have been if he had seen
what the Lawrences and Havelock saw, and had endured
what they endured, I do not know; but that is what he
was; and one order of life may be said to have passed from
Calcutta with the retirement of Lord Lawrence. Then
there was a certain gaiety and festivity about Lord Mayo —
an Lish gift some people called it, while they at the same
time shared and enjoyed what it provided. That Lord
Mayo in the Mutiny could have saved the Punjab, liis
best friends could hardly imagine. That he could at once
have formed and led a colunm like Havelock's or Neill's,
is, of course, equally out of the question. Under no cir-
cumstances would he have exhibited qualities like those
of Warren Hastings or Clive or the Marquis Wellesley.
Possibly, indeed, history may not class him among its great
men. But I am mistaken if he was not a good man, generous,
brave, and frank, extraordinarily clear-sighted as to facts,
and while at times indolent in speech, exceedingly prompt
in action, and capable both of comprehensive views and a
decisive policy. I believe that if he was bitter at all it
was towards some act of oppression or injustice — a quality
that has always been of high repute in Eastern lands. All
this a new-comer to India in the middle of 1870 had to
learn; but long before Lord Mayo had arrived in Calcutta,
evidence of the absolute badness of the income tax, of its
unsuitableness to India, and of the cruelty with which it
pressed upon the poor, was overwhelming; and I, for one,
would not have defended it, come what might.
Lord Mayo went to Hajpootana to see the chiefs and

36 ENGLISH RULE AND

people, and to talk with the former. Most of the memoranda
to which I could refer with respect to this journey relates
to mere ceremonies in which no one can have much interest.
Looking, however, upon these notes (taken from letters
which reached me from time to time), it is not difficult to
see that a decidedly practical vein ran through the entire
tour. The variety of objects seems almost boundless,
and also the variety of work. Of the Rajpoot line Mr
J. Talboys Wheeler^ says:

'' They are the noblest and proudest race in India, and, with the
exception of the Jevs, there are, perhaps, no living people of higher
antiquity or purer descent. They claim to be representatives of the
Kshatriyas, the descendants of the Aryan warriors who conquered
the Punjab and Hindostan in times primaeval. To this day they
display many of the characteristics of the heroes of the Maha Bharata
and Eamayana. They form a military aristocracy of the feudal type.
They are brave and chivalrous, keenly sensitive of an affront, and
especially jealous of the honour of their women. Their chiefs, when
occasion serves, are prepared to lead the lives of outlaws, like the
Pandava brothers, or to go into exile with the silent haughtiness of
Rama. ... In later revolutions their seats of empire have been
shifted further west and south, but the Rajpoot kingdoms still remain
as relics of the old Aryan aristocracy.'*

TMs extract will supply a key to some of the incidents
of the tour. An early note kindly sent to me says:

" We arrived in the neighbourhood of Jeypore on the night of the
nth of October; and camp was pitched about six miles outside the
town, after a drive from Bhurtpore of about 112 miles imder a burn-
ing sun. When the North West had been left behind, and the more
arid parts of Rajpootana were entered upon, the country did not wear
the same fruitful appearance. The roads, however, are good, many
of the houses exceedingly substantial, and as fEir as Jeypore is con-
cerned, all this has been done without British help, by the unaided
enterprise and energy of the Maliarajah. The nobles poured in from
all quarters — the fine old Thakoors, followed by their wild, fierce re-
tainers, if one may apply such a term as retainer to these motley-clad
bodies of undisciplined men.

'* Early in the morning the Maharajah, with a large body of Thak-
oors, was at the appointed rendezvous, three miles from the city.

1 " History oflndia."

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 37

The procession was arrayed in a pass, formed by low rugged hills,
lined with a hundred and fifty elephants in gorgeous attire. The
town was in its gayest. It had for weeks been looking forward to this
pageant, rare enough in one sense, for Lord Mayo is the first Governor
General who ever visited Jeypore in state, though it is said Lord
W. Bentinck once did so privately. What the city was at that time
it would, perhaps, be difficult to ascertain, but now it is one of the
most beautiful in India. Entering by the eastern gate there is a fine
street eighty yards in breadth and half-a-mile long, with lofty houses
of all styles of architecture and all manner of colouring, but very
chaste and graceful as a rule. At the end of this street is a wide
square from which other streets strike out in different directions. In
the centre is the palace of the Maharajah, built of white marble or
something like marble, and from it streets run in different directions,
all clean and handsome, and the principal ones paved with white stone.
" By seven o'clock in the morning the route of the procession was
in order — cavalry and infantry lining the entire distance; and
immense crowds of people, a large number of them ladies, and in some
cases very pretty, were ranged behind. The entrance to Jeypore is by an
easy ascent, and the procession, about a mile long, was very pictur-
esque. When the Viceroy's elephant entered the city the troops pre-
sented arms, the batteries fired a royal salute, and the people in the
streets and on the house-tops rose as on a signal, and with an effect
really imposing. At the Ajmere Gate the procession was met by a
part of *the warriors' — the Nagas — a body of men eight thousand
strong, devoted to war and bound against marriage, their ranks being
made up from time to time by adoption. It was a splendid guard,
ready to attempt almost anything for which orders might be given.
. . . The party left Jeypore on the morning of the i8th, jmrt of
the way in carriages, and part at a hand gallop to Sambhur Salt Lake.
The same day Lord Mayo inspected the salt works, wonderfully pri-
mitive in the mode of operation, but interesting, and it appeared
remunerative. The first part of the process is to dam off a portion of
the lake, where the water is left to evaporate, the salt remaining at
the bottom. The gathering of this with hands or wooden spades
occupies a large number of people ; men, women, and children scram-
bling for their share of the work. The salt is piled up in heaps, which
lie for three or four years ; one such heap, pointed out to the Viceroy,
was Talued at ^£7000. Several hours were spent in the inspection of
this lake and the salt manufacture, if manufacture it can be called.
Then a branch line of railway was decided upon. Next day Lord
Mayo entered Ajmere. The road was kept by the Mhairwara Battal-
ion, the Central Indian Horse, and other troops. The city, the streets
of which are narrow but clean, was decorated with triumphal arches.

38 ENGLISH RULE AND

On the following morning a private durbar was held, beginning at
half-past six in the morning, and ending at eleven."

In the afternoon the Viceroy opened a new part of
the High School, and spoke earnestly to the boys of the
value of education, and of some of the duties of life.
Afterwards he visited the gaol, and reviewed the Mhair-
wara Battalion. Next day, Saturday, the public durbar
was held, and here arose a curious difl&culty as to right of
precedence between the chiefs of Oodeypore and Jodhpore.
When the knot had been untied in favour of Oodeypore,
the defeated chief (a young man, not liighly respected it
was said) retired in high displeasure, and his tent among
all those of the durbar alone was silent. When the poor
young chief, who had evidently hoped to be called in, had
fretted till lie was tired, he went to the durbar. Now,
however, the doors were shut, and he was ordered to quit
Ajmere. I thought that this was a hard case, but the
Government declared authoritatively that the behaviour
of the chief had been very bad, not now merely, but
generally, and that to allow him to brave the power of the
Governor General would have had a most baneful effect.
A fortnight later, it was stated that the Maharajah, in
appealing to the Viceroy on the question of precedence,
had received an exceedingly severe reprimand. The reply
showed that the precedence belonged to Oodeypore, and
decreed that Jodhpore should receive no more salutes or
honours till the will of the Secretary of State was known.
Eventually the delinquent Maharajah was forgiven, but
his contention for precedence had to fall to the ground,
the Oodeypore family standing exceptionally high in its
claim to an ancient unbroken pedigree and unmixed blood.

In his durbar speech Lord Mayo assured the chiefs, in
strong and friendly terms, that " the desire of her Majesty's
Government is to secure to you and to your successors the
full enjoyment of your ancient rights." In order, however,
that this object might be attained, he exhorted them to
evince a like care for the rights of those under them, and

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 39

to see that justice, order, and the security of property pre-
vailed " throughout the length and breadth of Rajpootana."
He then with great cordiality invited the chiefs to establish
a college for their sons, and pointed out in terse and forcible
terms, that if the Indian Government had wished the ruling
men of Eajpootana to be weak and divided, this invitation
to them, now made in sincere good faith, would have been
the last suggestion thought ot The speech throughout
was in the same excellent taste and spirit, and was most
cordially received. The idea intended to be conveyed was
conveyed to the letter, and perhaps in all Lord Mayors career
no better evidence could be found of his clear-sightedness as
to facts, and of his power, when unrestrained, to give effect
to his perceptions in language as clear as a running brook.
The school was at once decided upon, and the principle of the
su^estion was, it is said, accepted cheerfully by the chiefs.
From the durbar Lord Mayo went to the Nusseembad
barracks, and decided some military questions. Then he
went to Agra and elsewhere, and so on the way to Cal-
cutta. At Ghazeepore, Buxar, and Poosah, he visited the
studs, evidently with delight. At Poosah, where there
were eight hundred fillies, he spent a whole day in the
inspection, and in making suggestions for improving the
breeds. From first to last the tour was one of practical
aims and unremitting work ; and it may be taken as one
of the prominent features of Lord Mayo's viceroyalty.

At length only the Hooghly separated the Governor
General from the people who were to hiss him. He was met
by the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal and a body of officials.
The Calcutta volunteers, at their request, formed a guard
of honour. There was no great cheering, it is true, as there
rarely is under an Indian sun, unless the occasion is very
marked ; but though Lord ^layo had had experience of the
value of that popular applause which is loud to-day and
very scanty to-morrow, he was not insulted. If he had
been so, the shame would not have been his. But the
common sense prevailed over the nonsense of Calcutta.

40 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

I never saw any indication that Lord Mayo was not
trusted for the uprightness of his motives, by any one
whose confidence he would have valued. He was so free
from aU pretentiousness (grave or gay), so thoroughly
natural in what he said and did, that in agreement or
disagreement he was believed. To dififer respectfully from
liis views never appeared to offend him ; which, however,
is simply to say that he w^ a gentleman.

Of the residence of the Government at Simla during
eight months of the year, I never heard any reasonable
defence. The effect of it is injurious in several different
ways. It is, to native minds, an assertion that Englishmen
cannot live on the plains, and hence cannot take root in
India. It converts the more prominent members of the
Government and their families into a series of little cliques,
practically all-powerfid in all cases of public employment,
of honours and distinctions, and, even in social life, divid-
ing them from the mercantile community as thoroughly as
if they belonged to another race. It is also a real injustice
to the lower grade of officials, who are compelled to keep
two houses without any increase of salaries. A holiday,
of whatever reasonable duration, would be beyond criticism.
It is the habit of removing the whole machinery of the
Government that is assailed. The political effect of the
removal is the strongest feature of the case. The fact that
the Governor General and his principal officers can only
live during the hot season on the mountain tops is an
ominous circumstance in view of future contingencies.
The argument on the opposite side is that the Government
work is better done at Simla than in Calcutta ; but then
the work lies in Calcutta, and, in many cases of direct
influence, cannot be effectively done elsewhere.

CHAPTER V.

FOREIGN POLICY: AFGHANISTAN.

To speak of Lord Mayo's foreign policy as his own would
be altogether inaccurate. It was the product of the thought
of many minds, and all that Lord Mayo*s friends can justly
claim for him is that he gave to the policy unity of pur-
pose, and decision, and perhaps crystallised it so that it
could be better understood in England and throughout
Europe. To explain fully the relation of Afghanistan to
India we should first require a treatise on the geography
and history of India, taking the history from very early
times. When this had been accomplished the threshold of
the subject might perhaps be reasonably presumed to have
been crossed. All that can be attempted here will go a
very short way towards elucidating the vast question of
our North Western frontier policy, although sufficient may
be said to indicate the general lines of that policy in past
and present times. The keys to a clear idea of the physical
relation of Afghanistan to India are the Afghan Passes, and
the river Indus, which, rising in the Himalayas, and re-
ceiving a number of affluents during a long course of 1800
miles, falls into the Arabian Sea.

When the first English factories in India were struggling
for an existence, Afghanistan and Scinde were practically
beyond the range of the Company's policy. When the
victories of Clive, and Coote, and Wellesley, and other of
the great soldiers and administrators of India, had shown
that an English empire in the East was a possibility, and
might become a necessity ; when the Malu'attas liad been
1)eaten, and the Pindarees all but exterminated, and the

42 ENGLISH RULE AND

Rohillas and the Ghoorkas defeated, the question of frontiers
became an all-important one ; and to comprehend and in-
iluence Afghan and Central Asian politics was a duty
which could not again be lost sight of by any government
of British India. Victors at Seringapatam, at Gwalior, at
Agra, at Delhi, at Muckwanpoor, and at Rangoon, we may
be said, during the earlier part of the governor-generalship of
Lord William Bentinck, while the Reform battle which ended
in 1832 was being fought in England, to have marked out in
Asia limits within which no sword could again be drawn or
gun fired without English permission. If we take a common
map, and pass from the Carnatic over the Bay of Bengal to
Tenasserim, and so along the borders of the bay to the
mouths of the Brahmapootra and the Ganges, and then,
passing down the opposite coast-line to Madras, go up-
ward by the west to Bombay, we shall find that no chief
or monarch whose territories rested on the coast could at
this time have acted in opposition to the power at Calcutta.
If the same course is taken inland it will be found that we
had secured the Ganges by our victories over Nepal ; and,
having also interests further westward than the land of the
Five Rivers, were bound to watch the Khyber and Bolan
Passes, the line of the Indus, the Passes of Nepal, and the
regions beyond the Irrawaddi on the east Therie were
vast independent territories and powerful potentates within
these lines, but not one of them could lift a hand for warfare
without the risk of England also taking the field.

If we look to a few general facts in the history of
the North West, this may have clearer meaning. The first
tangible relation of India to Western conquerors is pre-
sumed to have been B.c. 518, when the King of Persia, Darius
Ilystaspes, crossed the Indus, with the fatal result for India
of a great increase of his revenue. From that time dates the
unhappy renown of India as a land of fabulous wealth-
meaning really a land which might be easily plundered.
Alexander the Great came two centuries later. Marching
over the Hindoo Koosh, and forcing the passes of Afghan-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 43

istan, he crossed the Indus at Attock. Of his struggle
with Porus, who ruled as far as Delhi, and his passage of
the rivers of the Punjab, history has made great account.
In the year 711a momentous event took place. The faith
of Mahomet by this time ruled from the Atlantic to the
Persian Gulf, on both sides of the Red Sea, and throughout
Persia and CabuL It had been in a fashion established
among the Afghans half a century earlier, and had put forth
its terrible feelers in different directions without much suc-
cess. In tliis year (during the Heptarchy in England)
India was invaded by the Arabs from Bussora. The Eaj-
poots were defeated, and Scinde conquered by a force of not
more than 80CX) men. Forty years later the Arab Moham-
medans were expelled by the Rajpoots, and Arab rule in
India closed.

Next came the series of invasions from Afghanistan,
from Ghuznee, where a djmasty famous in Indian history
was founded in blood about the middle of the tenth cen-
tury. Mahmoud of Ghuznee, who called liimself " the
image-breaker," invaded India ten times, and undertook'
twelve or thirteen distinct expeditions of fearfully cruel
import. On the last occasion he carried away the sandal-
wood gates of Somnath, which 800 years later, after the
victorious operations of Sale, I*ollock, and Nott, Lord
Ellenborough recovered,^ or believed he recovered, for tlie
Hindoos. Mahmoud's cruel and barbarous expeditions
engaged him from a.d. i 001 till about 1025. He died in
1030. It should be observed that he reigned from Ispahan,
on the west, to Lahore, which 120 years after his death be-
came the Afghan capital Nearly all the difficulty English-
men may have in comprehending the disputes of Dost
Mohammed and Runjeet Singh and our own relation to them
would be removed if these few simple facts were borne in
mind. We are apt to think of Afghanistan as having
natural boundaries, the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever. History, it will be seen, has no such lesson.

^ Appendix, Note I.

44 ENGLISH RULE AND

The Afghan (Ghor) dynasty (ifrora Ghori in Klhorassan)
succeeded in 1186, and though the dynasty only lasted
twenty-six years, its greatest chief, Mohammed Ghori, is
accepted as the real founder of the future Mohammedan
empire. The cruel tide of conquest again swept over the
quiet cities of the Ganges, which were not merely plun-
dered as before without mercy, but were also annexed.
The Slave Kings of Delhi ruled from 1205 to 1239. Two
other dynasties, which may for convenience be termed
Afghan, followed, and continued till 1398, when Delhi
was sacked by Timour the Tartar. A curious incident of
one of these dynasties — the Toghluk — was an attempted
invasion of China by the passes of the Himalayas in 1337.
A force of ioo,ocx) men actually penetrated to the Cliinese
frontier. They were, however, met by a Chinese army, and
forced back to the Terai of Nepal, and are said to have
nearly all perished The same monarch (Afghan, let us
remember) subjugated the Deccan, conquered and annexed
as far as Chittagong eastward, and raised 37o,ocx) horse for
the conquest of Persia.

Next came the Moguls. The founder of the dynasty,
Ghengis Khan, believed, at least, that he had an empire
from the Caspian Sea to Pekin, and there can be no doubt
that his victories and annexations ranged over all this
immense territory, though there can be quite as little
doubt that, when he turned his back in any direction,
there his rule ended. His son Timour invaded India, and
laid the foundation of the Mogul line. His conquests in
Syria, Bagdad, on the Caspian, in Asia Minor, and in
India, are a still further proof that the vast distances, and
the deserts and steppes of Asia, never yet barred the
way to India, if India could not bar the way by its own
strong hand. Timour died in 1404, on his way to invade
China.

It was not, however, till the time of Baber, the sixth in
descent from Timour, that the empire was established by
the victory of Paniput. Humayoon succeeded in 1530,

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 45

but was ignominiously driven from the throne. During his
flight westward, a giri of his harem, and said to have been
beautiful, gave birth to a son, who was named Akbar.
Humayoon never stopped in his flight till he reached Herat.
He returned from Cabul to India for the recovery of his
throne in 1555, and succeeded, but died in the following
year. Akbar, a boy of thirteen, ascended the throne,
.and established his rule by another great victory at Pani-
put He reigned fifty-one years, from 1 556 to 1605 — ^^^ of
the most glorious reigns in the history of any land. Of
his greatness and magnificence no special mention can be
made here ; but it is quite within the scope of this chapter
to observe that among his conquests were the Punjab,
Bengal, Orissa, Cashmere, and Candahar. That is, not
only was Afghanistan within dominions which extended
to the east of India, but Akbar held also in Cashmere the
highway to what we now call Kashgaria.

Of Jehangir and his Noor Jehan (" Light of the World "),
of Shah Jehan and the beautiful wife for whose tomb he
built the Taj, and of Aurungzebe, much that would illus-
trate passing events might be told. But it is chiefly to our
purpose to note that now the Mahrattas and Sikhs rose
against the Mogul rule, and that Dellii itself seemed on the
point of falling before Bajee Eao, the Mahratta Peishwa
(prime minister), in 1737, when another tide of invasion
swept through the passes of the North West. The Persians,
under Nadir Shah, carried all before them, captured and
plundered Delhi, and bore oflf to Afghanistan the Koh-i-
noor and the Peacock Throne. The Mahrattas, under Bajee
Eao, but also with devastating forces under Holkar and
Scindia, now made havoc of the carcase of the Mogul
empire, when again a mightier power interposed. Ahmed,
the successor of Nadir, appeared east of the Indus, and
swept all before him with almost unrivalled cruelty.
Twice again he led similar waves. On the second of these
occasions (Afghan invasions), a third great battle was
fought at Paniput, and the Mahrattas crushingly defeated.

46 ENGLISH RULE AND

Ahmed then returned to Afghanistan, leaving the Mogul
empire for ever.

If the reader will observe these facts, I think they will
supply a better clue to our frontier policy both eastward
and westward, than could possibly be had by taking the
facts for granted, and referring at once to Dost Mohammed
and Eunjeet Singh. It will be seen how little account was
made of vast distances and natural obstacles; how Afghani-.
Stan was not a frontier, or barrier for a frontier, but actually
the centre of great empires. Observe also that in the year
in which Alimed sacked Delhi, Clive won Plassey. The
first step was taken in stemming those terrible waves of con-
quest which had only plunder and cruelty for their object.
No persons anywhere comprehend this fact more clearly
than the really educated readers and thinkers of BengaL

It is very easy from this point to take up the threads of
the North Western policy of the Indian Government. From
early in the century till 1839, two representative men seem
to fill the entire range of vision in the North West — Eun-
jeet Singh, the Lion of Lahore, and Dost Mohanuned, the
Afghan. Eunjeet Singh succeeded to the throne of the
Sikhs in 1792, and began with singular ability, even while
a boy, to consolidate his power and increase his dominions.
In return for assistance to the ruler of Cabul, he re-
ceived back the old capital of the Punjab — Lahore. He
perfected his army with the help of able European ofl&cers
till it was one of the finest in India ; and he was prudent
enough, when to all appearance about to spring on Sirhind
(lying between the Punjab and the Sutlej), to stop short of
the spring, when General Ochterlony, the hero of Nepal,
appeared with an army. Then there came a crisis for Eng-
land. The Governor General, Lord Minto, having decided,
in view of Eussian and French advances,^ to send embassies
to Persia, Afghanistan, and Lahore, Eunjeet Singh received
his embassy, and agreed to a treaty which was signed at
Amritsur in 1809. The embassy to Shah Sujah, monarch of

1 Appendix XL

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 47

Afghanistan, found him at Peshawur, but all that he could
understand of the business was, that he ought, in virtue of a
treaty, to receive help against his internal enemies. The
British Government did not quite see this, and Shah Sujah's
affairs went from bad to worse, till at last he was a fugitive
over the Indus. He sought refuge with Eunjeet Singh, and
was robbed, by that accomplished gentleman, of the Koh-
i-noor, which Nadir Shah had stolen from India. This
collapse of the Afghan monarch's affairs was in 1814. He
then crossed into British territory, and was pensioned. The
Sikh ruler meanwhile pursued his inexorable way; at one
time defeated, then victorious, but in the end sacking
Peshawur, and defeating the Afghans to the Khyber Pass.
In 1 83 1 Lord William Bentinck and Eunjeet Singh met at
Koopur, the latter attended by 16,000 chosen men, the
Governor General by a small retinue. The pomp of this
meeting was the theme of many pens ; the practical result
of it was the protection of Scinde from the grasp of the
Sikh. In 1833 Shah Sujah made another attempt for his
tlirone, and was defeated by Dost Mohammed. A Uttle
later he returned hopeless to British territory.

This brings before the reader the second of the two re-
markable men to whom reference has been made. While
Dost Mohammed was engaged with Shah Sujah (whom
all Englishmen who knew him contemned), Eunjeet Singh
seized Peshawur. Dost Mohammed proclaimed a religious
war for its recovery, but the address and intrigue of the
Sikh were too much for him. His army melted away
before liis eyes; and he was compelled to return, a defeated
man, to Cabul. When Lord Auckland arrived in India
(1836), the Afghan chief appealed to him for mediation,
and Lord Auckland, contrary to the advice of all wlio
knew best the state of the North West, answered the
request by resolving to restore Shah Sujah to the throne —
a design naturally enough supported by Eunjeet Singh.
Dost Mohammed, in dread of the English and the Sikhs on
the one hand, and of the Persians and Eussians on tlie

48 ENGLISH RULE AND

other, had no alternative but to appeal to the latter powers;
and Eussia sending an embassy to Cabul, Lord Auckland
began his ill-fated war. A splendid British army set out
for Afghanistan in December 1 838, and was everywhere suc-
cessful. Ghuznee and Cabul were captured, and Candahar
occupied. In August 1 839 Shah Sujah re-entered his capital
after thirty years of exile. Sir William Macnaghten (then
knighted) was appointed envoy at his court, with Sir Alex-
ander Burnes as his assistant. Lord Auckland was created
an earl. The commanders of the expedition were thanked
by Parliament. Wellington, Lord William Bentinck, and
others had, it is true, discountenanced the expedition, and
every British officer concerned had spoken as highly of
Dost Mohammed as they had spoken deprecatingly of Shah
Sujah, and doubtfully of Eunjeet Singh. Here, however,
was the endorsement of complete success.

In June 1839 Eunjeet Singh died. In November 1840
Dost Mohammed, after a gallant struggle, sun^endered, and
was pensioned in Calcutta. A year later Sir A. Burnes
and his brother were murdered in Cabul; and a fierce
insurrection under Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed,
bore down all before it, till Macnaghten consented to
treat on the basis of evacuating Cabul, Candahar, Ghuznee,
and Jellalabad, and restoring the family of Dost Moham-
med to the throne. On this understanding Akbar Khan
agreed to himself conduct the British through the passes on
their way to India. Up to this time there is no reason to
believe that the disgrace to our arms was to have been
accompanied with massacre. At this critical time, how-
ever. Sir WiUiam Macnaghten was detected by Akbar
in undoubted intrigues with the Ghilzye and other tribes,
to detach them from the Afghans. The fate of the English
in Cabul was then sealed. Macnaghten, invited to a con-
ference, and Captain Trevor who accompanied him, were
shot by Akbar himself on the open ground.

The British troops, eager to avenge the murder, of the
real cause of which they knew nothing, were held back by

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 49

their chiefs. Another treaty was made, and on the 6th
January 1842 the fatal march of about 4500 soldiers and
12,000 camp followers began. On tlie 8th they entered
the Khoord Cabul Pass, lined with the Ghilzyes, and were
massacred in detail. On the loth the army numbered 50
artillerymen, 250 men of the 24th, 150 cavalry, and about
4000 camp followers. On the 13th the force, drooping
and disheartened, numbered 20 officers and 45 men.
Finally one man, Dr Brydon, the sole survivor of the
army, arrived at Jellalabad. With these events and what
followed them every Englishman ought to be acquainted.
The defence of Jellalabad by Sale, and of Candahar by
Nott; the glorious concerted marches of Nott and Pollock,
and their gallant and soldierly assumption of the responsi-
bility which Lord EUenborough threw upon them; the
march into Cabul, and the rescue of the English ladies who
were threatened with slavery beyond the Hindoo Koosh, are
among those features of our history that never can pass
away. The subsequent restoration of Dost Mohammed is
the pivot-fact on which all Afghan aflfairs since then have
centred. His reign continued till his death in 1863.

It is necessary also to observe, that while our and Shah
Sujah's struggle with Dost Mohammed was going on, the
Persians, assisted openly by Russian officers, invested
Herat, from which, after a siege of nine months, they were
driven (1838), mainly by the courage and capacity of a
young Irish officer, Eldred Pottinger. This important
event, and the fact that many names, afterwards very
memorable, came first into note at this time — Outram,
Havelock, the Lawrences, Durand, John Nicholson, and
others — ^may properly close up one stage of this summary.
All these elements, Afghan, Persian, Eussian, and Sikh,
must be taken into consideration, together with the
toimoil in Beloochistan, Kelat, and as far as Oman, if we
would see the real character of the policy which once
more has its pivots in the passes of Afghanistan. That the
expedition of Lord Auckland was a huge error, and that

D

50

ENGLISH RULE AND

Lord EUenborough did not essentially redeem the error,
wise men saw then, and all men see now. In advancing
the story another stage, the following table of the family of
Dost Mohammed will be found both interesting and use-
ful — a key in fact to all that has passed on the North West
frontier for the last thirteen years.

Dost Mohammed Khan, oh, 9th June 18631 at Herat.

A favourite wife. A wife of low d^;ree.

A wife of Doble family.

Akbar Khan,
who killed
Sir W.Mac-
naghtcn.

Afzol

Khan.
Rahi

Azim Khan.

Abdool Rahman.

ShereAli. Ameen Khan, ShureefKhan.
Idlled at the
battle of Kujh-
baa, 3d June
1865.

Putteh Moham-
med.

Jelalooddccn.

A son, his favour-
ite, killed at
the battle of
Kujhbaz, 3d
Jime X865.

n>

rahim Khan. YidcooD Khan, Abdoola, the
Governor of declared

Herat. heir.

When Dost Mohammed died, the succession was by his
will declared in favour of Shere Ali, to the exclusion of his
two elder brothers, Afzul and Azim. In 1864-65 the elder
brothers rebelled, and Afzul was captured and imprisoned.
His son, Abdool Bahman (one of the main factors in the
present state of aflfairs), found refuge with the Ameer of
Bokhara, whose daughter he had married. In the same
year Ameen rose in rebellion. He was defeated, but with
the loss to Shere Ali of his favourite eldest son. In the
same year Eahman again crossed the Oxus, and was joined
by his uncle Azim. Cabul was wrested from the Ameer's
son Ibrahim, and the Ameer himseK was defeated, near
Ghuznee, in May 1866. Afzul was now released and de-
clared Ameer. Shere Ali fled with his son Ibrahim and
his nephew to Herat, where his son Yakoob, of tried
courage, commanded. In May 1867 Afzul died, and even-
tually Shere Ali won the position he has ever since retained,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 5 1

and won it in a great measure by the warlike capacity of
Yakoob. Abdool £ahman again fled beyond the Oxus,
where he was pensioned by the Eussians.

During the governor-generalship of Lord Lawrence the
apprehension of Persian (covering Eussian) interference
was so great, that when in 1868 a British expedition was
sent against the Afghans of the Black Mountain (influ-
enced by the Wahabees), it was difficult to persuade people
that beneath the nominal object a great deal more was
not hidden. In referring to this subject in the House of
Lords this year (June 15th), Lord Lawrence said: "It
was now twenty years since he made the treaty which still
exists between the Cabul Government and the British
Government Since then the reigning Ameer had been
our prisoner, and by Lord Ellenborough magnanimously
restored to his country. Before his death that Ameer
warned the British Government against supporting the
conflicting pretensions of either of his two sons, and
advised us to let them fight it out, and to steadily
refuse to support either party until one got the better
of the other." In March 1869 Lord Mayo and Shere
Ali met in splendid durbar at Umballa, the Ameer
accompanied by his youngest son, Abdoola Jan (son
of a favourite wife), while Yakoob was left behind —
**in the cold," some, including M. Vambery, said; in
high trust and command, others maintained. Yakoob
seems to have agreed with the former. Abdoola was
acknowledged the heir; and though Lord Mayo did not
support, or beyond what was possible to withhold, counte-
nance the Ameer's succession policy, there cannot be a
doubt that Abdoola was present for a specific purpose
which Yakoob never could forgive.

In September 1870 news arrived in Calcutta that
Yaboob was in rebellion, and fast collecting a powerful
force. Three weeks later there was talk of a proposal,
favoured by the Indian Government, to give up Candahar
to Yakoob. The allowance of Abdool Eahman was about

52 ENGLISH RULE AND

the same time reported to have been stopped by the
Russians — a token, it was held, of good faitL Early in the
year a letter, without date, had been found, inviting Rahman
to Samarcand, where he "would find friends." In December
the rebellion was reported nearly at an end. The Ameer's
commander-in-chief, Feramoorz Khan, and Aslum Khan, the
Ameer's half-brother and great favourite, were pushing Ya-
koob hard ; and as Persia made no sign in his favour, his
cause was deemed hopeless. In January 1871 Takoob was
reported on his way to Cabul, a suppliant for his father's
mercy. A few days later he had broken from his escort,
and was again at large. At the end of June Feramoorz
and Aslum were beginning fresh operations. In July a
telegram reported the murder of Feramoorz, and the sus-
picion that Aslum was the murderer.

Telegram after telegram now recorded the changing phases
of the drama. Aslum, the Ameer's favourite, had been sent
prisoner to Cabul, where Yakoob had, with dire intent,
preceded him, and made peace with the Ameer. Aslimi
and Yakoob were bitter foes, Aslum having favoured the
succession of Abdoola Jan. The official account of the
murder stated that Aslum, Alum Khan, Feramoorz Khan,
and some others, were sitting in a tent plajdng back-
gammon, when a gun was fired from the outside, and the
commander-in-chief fell, shot in the back, and died in a
few minutes. The army at once attempted to take venge-
ance on Aslum, whose diflferences with the dead general
were known; but Alum, second in command, and now
commander-in-chief, stepped before Aslimi, Koran in hand,
and demanded that the rights of justice should be left
to the Ameer; and the troops agreed. Early in August
Aslum was taken into the city in irons, Yakoob meanwhile
reported to be in high favour. On October i8th news
arrived that Aslum had been murdered in prison by two
of his brothers. He had, it was said, confessed his guilt,
and his brothers having obtained access to him, attempted
poison, and, that failing, fell back on the unerring rope.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 53

What passed in that prison no one ever will know. If
Aslum had succeeded he would have carried his brothers
up with him to fortune. As he failed, his brothers sent him
down to the grave. Such is the state of affairs on this
stormy frontier.

From that time to this Yakoob has been more or less a
prisoner. The Umballa policy, it was said, was at an
end; and while some people maintained that Lord Mayo
was bound to defend the Ameer against the rebel son,
others held that the son, without whom the Ameer might
have been a fugitive at Samarcand, or perhaps in the
grave, ought to have been defended against the father.
The truth is that the policy of the durbar was the policy
of the passing hour, and could not be otherwise, so far as
individuals were concerned. All that is enduring is that
England shall support Afghanistan in its own choice of
ruler, and interfere as little as possible in Afghan affairs.
Of late (1877) there has been a rupture, which may end
in anything on earth without causing surprise to any one
who has watched the affairs of Afghanistan. The Ameer,
it is said, is discontented, and Yakoob, for the first time
for many years, has become " all English." Englishmen,
where so much is uncertain, may differ in much; but will
they differ as to there being in these facts a cause of dis-
quietude beyond this North West frontier?

K the object of this chapter has been attained, it has
been shown that all the conditions, save one, of the wars of
Mahmoud of Ghuznee, and Ghengis Khan, and Timour, and
Nadir Shah, and Ahmed, exist to this day. All beyond the
Indus westward is the same. The distances are no greater.
The steppes and deserts are no more difficult than of old.
Human life is of no greater value ; and plunder and mas-
sacre are no less fashionable. The one single new fact
is the strength of British power east of the Indus. All
who hate wars and bloodshed, and wish to see civilisation
advance, may well pray to God that the rule may be as
wise and good as it has been strong.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PERSIAN GULF — PERSIA, BELOOCHISTAN, AND
KELAT — BURMA AND YARKUND— THE LOOSHAI.

The vexed questions of the Persian, Kelat, and Beloochi-
stan boundaries, although little heard of in England, apart
from statesmen, geographers, and merchants, are of a nature
to excite lively apprehensions among persons whose duty
it is to watch and divine each half-developed turn of the
drama, and every new impulse of strangely impulsive
races.

The story of the dynasties of Oman was told some years
ago to the Hakluyt Society, in a translation of an Arabic
work, by the Eev. Dr Badger, and was introduced by him
in an "Analysis," which was in fact a distinct work About
the same time a Bombay administration report (foreign
affairs) took up the story where Dr Badger left off. Dr
Badger's work tells the story from a.d. 66 i to a.d. 1865.
The Bombay report begins at that year, and brings down
the narrative to the time of Lord Mayo's administration.

Syud Said, beyond whom it is imnecessary to go, died in
the year 1856, after a reign of fifty-two years — seventeen
conjointly with his brother, and the rest alone. He left
fifteen sons to scramble for the succession, and three of
them at the time of his death ruled over the three chief
districts under his sovereignty: Thowe)mee (the eldest)
at Muscat, Toorkee (the third) at Sohar, and Majid (the
fourth) at Zanzibar. The geographical position of Zanzi-
bar is worth remembering here. The Wahabees, who
had long been a thorn in the side of Syud Said and his.
family, appeared on the outside, with ominous movements,

■: I

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA: 55

which had when necessary to be restrained. What Syud
Said's true will was nobody can exactly say, but Thowey-
nee and Majid agreed to retain their respective govern-
ments, the latter pa)ring tribute, while Toorkee, in fact,
claimed independence. In a Uttle time Majid also dis-
continued his tribute, and Thoweynee was preparing an
expedition against him when the British Government
interfered. In 1862, the dispute having been referred to
British arbitration, Syud Thoweynee's authority was con-
firmed in Oman, with a guarantee of tribute from Zanzibar.
At the same time, however, Zanzibar was in its govern-
ment declared independent, an important separation of the
dominions of the Syuds in Africa from those in Asia.
Toorkee alone of the three was dissatisfied. In dealing
with the danger which his enmity created, it is curious
to observe that Thoweynee opened negotiations with the
Wahabee Ameer, re-opened a long discontinued inter-
course with Nedj in Arabia (claimed by the Turks, but
held by the Wahabees, as the cradle of their creed), and
promised a subsidy, which was to be termed a contribution
to the Shereef of Mecca. I mention these facts to show still
further how swiftly and far an Eastern impulse may spread.
In 1864 the Walli (ruler) of Er-Eostak, Azzan-bin-
GhiajB, revolted, and offered to transfer his allegiance to
the Wahabee Ameer ; and Syud Thoweynee was preparing,
with British countenance, to put down the rebellion, when
(1866) he was murdered by his son SaUm, who had also
shut up Toorkee in Sohar. The British resident in the
gul^ Colonel Pelly, suspecting the true fact, proceeded to
Sohar and set Toorkee free. Of the murder by Salim there
was believed to be no moral doubt, but as there was
assumed to be no legal or decisive proof, SaUm ascended
the throne, the British Government concurring, and so
effectually opposing the pretensions of Toorkee, that he
was altogether foiled in an enterprise which for a time
had bade fair to depose the murderer. Toorkee retired to
Bombay at the end of 1867, resigning aU territorial claims

56 ENGLISH RULE AND

in consideration of a payment to him of ^2QO dollars a year
by the Syud. A year later Azzan-bin-Ghias again took
the field, defeated Salim, and was proclaimed ruler.

Toorkee could now consider himself free from his engage-
ment, but he saw no chance of success till, in 1869, Azzan
captured El-Beraymee, the great Wahabee outpost and
stronghold. The Wahabee lieutenant had brought the
disaster upon himself, by entering into league with Salim,
but that was a mere side issue to Toorkee, who at last
saw a fair chance of success while Azzan was at war
with the Wahabees. In 1870, after some joint attempts
with Salim, Toorkee landed on the pirate coast, the
Indian Government warning him not to break the peace
of the gulf Money to a limited extent he received from
Zanzibar, but his followers were few, in the face of a
ruler who had at least shown great military capacity. For
about two months the position of the invader was most
critical. Azzan, with a powerful ally, the Aboothabee
chief, who held Beraymee, was carrying all before him.
Toorkee attacked this chief and was defeated, but in the
very moment of defeat he caught and attacked Azzan him-
self in one of the passes, and was victorious. At this
critical time, however, his supplies were cut off by the
death of his brother, the Sultan of Zanzibar, and there was
again for him a dark time of suspense.

Early in January 1871 intelligence reached the Indian
Government that Toorkee was marching on Muscat, and
that the " Hugh Eose " (English steamer) would keep a
sharp look-out to prevent operations by sea. Up to this
date the Government had stood altogether aloof from
Toorkee. On February 8th news came that Ibraham-bin-
Ghias (Azzan's brother, ruler of Muscat) had been killed, and
that Toorkee was on a fair way to capturing Muscat. In
April the Government learned that the chiefs were submit-
ting to Toorkee, who had already farmed the customs revenue
of Muscat for thirty thousand more dollars than Azzan had
obtained for them. Beraymee also had surrendered. In

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, $7

July Toorkee's success was assured. In August his position
was acknowledged; and he was formally recognised by the
British Government as ruler of Muscat. Then he received
with ceremony the political agent, tlie senior naval officer on
the station, and the oflScers of the "Bullfinch" and "Con-
stance," with a number of English residents. The day was
kept as a holiday. The vessels in the harbour were dressed,
and the "Bullfinch" fired a royal salute. Never, perhaps, in
the world's history was there a series of more interesting and
curious instances of the proverbial slip between the cup
and the lip, than these operations exhibited to the looker-
on. To the Indian Government, however, the interest was
intermixed with some anxiety. The master of Muscat had
always been the real master of Oman, and Toorkee held
Muscat. His victories too had been sharp and prompt,
but so also had been Azzan's ; and Toorkee's competitors for
the throne were no fewer than thirty, ^vith, in many cases,
titles as good as his own in all save that of the sword.
The situation for months was critical, but with Toorkee
remained the victory. From July 1870 I had taken notes
regularly of these curious events.

Then what was done in the Persian Gulf must of neces-
sity be taken in connection with affairs in Afghanistan,
with the disturbing elements in Persia, and with the
curious invasion (referred to in relation to Aden and the
Eed Sea) of Arabia by the Turks. In May 1871 it was
placed beyond doubt that Nedj was to be attacked for the
Porte, and there was a strong impression on the minds of
Indian, and also I think of English diplomatists, that if
this succeeded the armed claim would be extended to
Muscat, Mekran, and elsewhere, on the ground of those
rights of conquest referred to in the previous chapter.
Here was indeed a momentous issue — an attempt to re-
weld an empire from the European side of the Bosphorus
to beyond the passes of Cabul. England hardly compre-
hended what was passing, but Russia and Persia did so
fully. In June it was known in India that the first infantry

58 ENGLISH RULE AND

detachments of the expedition had been afloat in April,
and that artillery and cavaliy were on their way overland
£rom Amnrah and Bagdad, while guns and stores were
being sent by boats, lie Mountific Arabs were to supply
a thousand horsemen, and other tribes in the neighbour-
hood contingents of horsemen and matchlock-men. All
this, it will be observed, had been arranged and carried into
effect without causing a ripple on the sea of European
diplomacy. It was not till November 1873 that England
was startled, as shown in the earlier chapter, by intelligence
tliat the invaders were threatening our aJlies the Sheikhs in
the neighbourhood of Aden. Then the English Government
stepped in, and the expedition collapsed. Who would ven-
ture to say, however, that some similar impulse, under some
more favourable conditions, may not any day lead to a like
exigency ?

At the same time there was going on under Colonel
Goldsmidt a difficult arbitration with respect to the bound-
aries of Persia, Afghanistan, Kelat, and Siestan, with such
other side issues as these huge questions involved. The
Government of Persia, chiefly concerned as a claimant, had
the reputation of being one of the most shifty in the world,
and the most difficult to fasten to an engagement. Occu-
pying a position between Eussia on the one hand, with
the Khanates and other wild territories intervening, and
India on the other, with Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Kelat,
and other districts, also wild and lawless, intervening,
Persia seems by its very position marked for intrigua The
refuge of fugitives from west and east ; the heir to a great
name and an ignoble reality ; looking back to a history of
conquests, yet chained to an existence more and more cir-
cumscribed every year, it could hardly be expected that
such a Government would materially assist the arbitrator
of England to arrive at a just conclusion. Moreover,
it could not be denied that the losses of Persia in her Cas-
pian provinces, and even at her very doors, were enough to
sour more patient spirits than she had for many ages pos-

NA TI VE OPINION IN INDIA . 59

sessed. It was not unnatural that as she was cut oif from
her dominions westward, while Kussia crept on to the
Oxus and the Turks evinced designs on Arabia, she should
put forward claims — ^not clearly invalid if read by a certain
kind of historic light — eastward in the direction of Kelat
and Mekran, if not of Cabul. That the negotiation was in
terms, and to some essential degree in fact, successful, was
allowed ; but again it must be said that, as in the case of
Afghanistan, no such treaty is worth the paper it is written
upon any longer than the power to enforce it exists. What
Colonel Goldsmidt had to do was to check the progress of
chronic disorder. The disorder itself he was powerless to
remove.

Eeference may also be usefully made to the light thrown
on frontier aflfairs by an outbreak of a tribe of Wuzeeree
mountaineers, the Mohammed Keyls, on the same frontier.
The tribe, numbering in all about 3000, of whom only 300
were fighting men, had been for years settled on British
territory, migrating to the hills in the hot weather and
returning when they pleased. In some sort of panic diffi-
cult to account for, they fell upon and cut up a detachment
of British troops, and a costly and imposing expedition
was sent out to punish the outrage — so costly and imposing
indeed that the Wahabees and not the petty tribe of Mo-
hammed Keyls were supposed to be the real object. On
the 2 1 st September 1 87 1 , the whole tribe — men, women, and
children, with liorses, cattle,and sheep — arrived atEdwardes-
abad and surrendered. People said that a steam-hanmier
had been put in motion to crush a fly. The reply was, that
no one knew what was in the background; that England
cannot now afford in India to risk a repulse, and that the
fly was dangerously near to imcaged tigers.

Turning to the eastern frontier of India, we find im-
mense difficulties in connection with the King of Burma,
whose caprice was as perplexing as war. Now he was our
Mend, now our enemy ; at one moment encouraging English
enterprise with enthusiasm, at another endeavouring to

6o ENGLISH RULE AND

open up negotiations avowedly against that enterprise with
some other European power. One day, again, intelligence
reached Calcutta that the king was for free trade — ^not a
half-and-half freedom, a mere " free breakfast table," it was
said, but absolutely unrestricted commerce. " Why not ? "
he asked; and Indian merchants echoed his question. Next
we heard that the king was about to turn shopkeeper on the
largest scale, and required for his purpose a general mono-
poly. It was difficult to see what might not occur from the
whims of such a king.

Major Sladen, Captain Strover, and other public-spirited
men, had striven hard to re-open the old trade routes to
Momein and Western China, and Lord Mayo very sincerely
favoured their projects. It was reported also that the Pan-
thays at Momein and elsewhere ardently desired the routes
re-opened, and only dreaded the adoption of some route
that would cut them off from the expected benefits. Here
again his Majesty of Burma appeared like an evil influ-
ence. There were three roads. Major Sladen said, all of
which he deemed practicable, and a great trade might easily
be opened if the King of Burma could be made to stand
aside. As yet, however, this has not been accomplished.
The deeds done on that frontier had long been appalling
where known, though Europe had heard little of them.
At one time the Mohammedans proved successful, and
butchered or circumcised and enslaved every Buddhist or
follower of Confucius whom they could capture. Then
the Chinese prepared themselves for a great fierce effort,
and swarming over the frontier when least expected, paid
back their enemy in kind. Women and children, old
and young, frequently disappeared in one huge merciless
massacre. This was, and is common life on the western
borders of China — ^life which Lord Mayo strove to influence
from two different directions, by way of the north-east
through Burma, Bhamo, and Momein, and to the north-
west by Cashmere and Yarkund.

In tlie latter direction a mission was sent in 1870, under

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 6i

Mr, now Sir T. D. Forsyth, to Yakoob Beg, Ameer of
Kashgaria. Mr Forsyth had previously been entrusted by
Lord Clarendon with a kind of informal mission to Eussia
with reference to the Afghan and Yarkund frontiers, and
had elicited an informal statement which, though not put
in writing, was deemed satisfactory. Early in 1870 Yakoob
Beg sent an embassy, ostensibly for commercial purposes,
to Calcutta. Mr Forsyth's was a return mission, arranged
to overtake and join the Yarkund people at Leh in Ladakh.
It also was declared to have a purely commercial object,
while, however, expressing to Yakoob Beg and his people
amity and goodwill. This declaration was almost cer-
tainly true, but it probably was not so accepted by the
Russians, who read it in connection with the fact that on
the high land of Asia, where Eussia was steadily approach-
ing on the one hand and the Chinese ceaselessly encroach-
ing on the other, this Yakoob Beg — a man of lowly origin
but of proved capacity, both in administration and war —
had placed himself at the head of a veritable " Moham-
medan revival," which might become no one could say
what. The order for the embassy was dated April 1 870.
In November the same year Mr Forsyth was again in Cal-
cutta. Yakoob Beg was away, with his army, at some great
distance from Yarkund, fighting the Tungani, and Mr
Forsyth having strict orders to return before the passes
closed for the year, the main object of the mission — an in-
terview with the successful soldier — was lost, though some
important subsidiary objects were gained. It was, I think,
seen afterwards that the decision to return was the only
practicable one, and that it would have been impolitic to
sacrifice too much to the dignity of Yakoob Beg.

Mr Forsyth was accompanied by two scientific men — Dr
Henderson and Dr Cayley — and by a skilful trader, Mr
Shaw. The two latter met him at Leh in Ladakh. On the
7th July the start was made from Leh for Yarkund. The
notes of this journey made by Mr Forsyth and his col-
leagues were in many parts very interesting, and depict

62 ENGLISH RULE AND

marvellous changes of scenery. Thirty marches over an
almost uninhabited country; a long journey by the banks
of the Indus ; then by a pleasant valley to the foot of the
Chang La Pass, 17,000 feet high; then, on the other side,
by pleasant villages and valleys rich with trees and foliage ;
then by a long dreary desert, and another higher pass, over
brown and barren mountains, to a pass higher still, the
high land of Asia. The scenery was described as grand,
though often for vast distances not a shrub or blade of
grass could be seen. One of the curiosities of this desert
was a large soda plain, with dust or spray oflFensive to taste
and smelL On entering Yarkund territory the envoy was
met by the fact of the Ameer's absence, and he resolved to
return to India. Yakoob Beg's representative, the Dadkhwah
(so called), however, pleaded hard for delay, and the em-
bassy remained long enough to make many inquiries as
to the manner of life in Yarkund, and to collect valuable
scientific facts.

There was found considerable industry, good cultivation,
trade with Eussia and Cashmere, and a Eussian outpost
eight days* journey from Kashgar, the capital of Yakoob
Beg*s dominions. The old trade routes between China and
Central Asia were closed by the war, and part of the
Chinese had fled to Eussian territory. Of the Tungani
Mr Forsyth wrote : " Whatever the origin of their name,
the Tungans were Mohanmiedans when they were first
removed to China, and, though they have insensibly fallen
into Chinese habits and customs, they adhere to the laws
of the Prophet, and observe strict rules of life, abstaining
from drink, opium, and even from tobacco." These are the
people who had been mainly instrumental in wresting from
the Chinese a vast amount of territory, and were on a fair
way to establishing an empire, when Yakoob Beg appeared
and massacred both them and the Chinese. Little more
need be said of this mission than that it returned to India,
and that it supplied the material for subsequent negotia-
tions, and led to the appointment of Mr Shaw to a post

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 63

from which he could watch for any openings that, from
time to time, were presented for trade.

A rumour of the death of Yakoob Beg (this year), and of
preparation by the Chinese to assail his dominions, gave
fresh interest to a wide political question involved. It was
hardly likely that another such man would appear in this
generation. Mr Forsyth's description of the Dadkhwah
gives one the idea of a mere though a skilful farm bailiff.^
Yet it became necessary to mark afresh the relations with
Yarkund, and "a retired officer, who knows the frontier
well," protested strongly in Tht Times of July last against
England mixing herself up in the affairs of Kashgaria and
China. "Russia alone," he said, "is concerned; she is
watching the course of events, and in due time wiU use
her influence for her own purpose." Wiser words than
those of this letter have not been written on the subject;
always premising that the object of our missions was any-
thing beyond obtaining accurate intelligence, and opening up
highways for trade. I do not think, however, that Lord Mayo
had any more remote object. Certainly he did not dream
of a mUitary demonstration beyond the passes of Cashmere.
Another phase of frontier policy was the despatch of an
envoy (Mr Edgar) for the second time to the Looshai
tribes, a dangerous, and so far imtamable class of gentle-
men on our north-eastern frontier. Mr Edgar's instructions
were " to fix a boundary line from the borders of Munipoor
to Hill Tipperah, where ordinary British jurisdiction would
cease, and beyond which the tribes would be held respon-
sible for the peace of the district ; to endeavour to open up
bridlepaths over the Cachar and Chittagong frontiers, and
to use his utmost endeavours to convince the Looshai
chiefis that while the Indian Government wished to live in
peace with them, and assist them to push their trade and
open up new veins of wealth in their own districts, any
recurrence of the old raiding practices would be sternly
repressed and punished." The plan was settled in

1 Api>endix III.

64 ENGLISH RULE AND

December 1870. Mr Edgar was to be met on his way by
a deputation from a noted chiefs (Sookpilal's) village, and
at the same time two other envoys. Major Graham and
Major Macdonald, were to start with a like object on a
visit to the chiefs of the south. At the end of January
1 87 1, intelligence arrived that a fierce attack had been
made on some Cachar tea plantations by a portion of the
Looshai tribes, at the very time that Mr Edgar was engaged
with Sookpilal, and indeed almost while that chief (one
of the worst raiders of 1 868-69) was accepting Lord Mayo's
terms. Lord Napier of Magdala went at once to the scene
of the outrage, but the rains were so heavy that even
intelligence could not for a time be obtained. The Govern-
ment meanwhile expressed doubt that the raiders were
Looshais. The tea merchants of Calcutta laughed scorn-
fully, and said, "Not merely Looshais, but directed by
Sookpilal." In the latter case, however, it appeared they
were mistaken.

The attack had been made on 23d January by different
bodies of raiders. The coolies fled in all directions, and
the marauders having plundered and destroyed property to
their hearts* content, and life where it came in their way,
retired in safety, as they thought, to hiills which never
as yet had been invaded. A little girl, the daughter of a
planter, Mr Winchester, who had been killed, was taken
away, but after an apparently not unpleasant sojourn with
her captors, was recovered by the men of the military
expedition which was speedily resolved upon. Nothing
could be done till the cold season at the end of the year.
By that time Lord Napier's plans were arranged in his
usually complete way. The force was to consist of two
columns, which were to start on the same date (20th
November), the one from Chittagong under Colonel Brown-
low, and the other from Cachar under General Bourchier.
The date was afterwards altered, but the plan was carried
out in its main features. These steps were not taken
without uneasiness. The difficulty was to know where

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 65

and how to strike. If houses and stores were burnt, they
would almost certainly, it was said, be those of the wrong
people, and while the raiders escaped, persons altogether
innocent would be killed. Yet that the tea gardens should
be abandoned to these ever-recurring raids could not for a
moment be endured.

The war — really a return raid — is not one that need be
dwelt upon. Major General Nuthall, Political Resident at
the court of the Bajah of Munipore, and in command of a
contingent of Munipoories, was first in action ; in conse-
quence, he said, of an attack upon his men at the post
assigned to them by Greneral Bourchier; in consequence
of his having advanced beyond that post. General Bourchier
affirmed. At all events he beat back the assailants.

After this, the war, mainly with rockets, shells, and the
rifle, progressed sharply. Early in May 1871 the reports
of the generals of the two columns were published in the
Gazette of India. The expedition was at an end. In
fighting men and camp followers the Cachar column had
lost about 500 men, and the Chittagong column about
1 50 ; but in both cases the losses were chiefly under the
head of died, not killed; the real foe was the climate.
So ended Lord Mayo's one war, avoided by him as long
as possible, and undertaken with unfeigned regret. He had
no ambition for the laurels of war, and least of all for those
of such a war as this; but before the expedition was con-
cluded. Lord Mayo was no more. The tribes were subdued
and humbled. How greatly they suffered, the innocent with
the guilty, will never be known, though it is known that
when the troops of the expedition turned their faces India-
ward, they left cholera and other diseases incident to war
behind

These facts of course present but a meagre view of
the causes of disquietude beyond the frontiers of India.
The aim has been, as far as possible, to show in this bare
general outline of some among many ever-recurring causes of
disquietude, the nature of many more. Indeed the subject

£

66 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

of the Wahabees in the chapter that will follow this,
with special reference to " causes of disquietude within,"
has an even greater relation to causes of disquietude beyond
the frontier, though it was as a fact within India itself
that Wahabeeism was grappled with during the years more
especially considered in these pages. If I were asked what
Native India thinks of our foreign policy, I would say that
Native India, on the whole, is critical ; is not displeased to
see us checkmated in our great designs; is rather glad
indeed when events remind us that we are' mortal Men
like Ameer Shere Ali the Afghan, and Jung Bahadoor of
Nepal, and even the King of Burma, are reminders to India
that there still remains for her the last dread appeal in case
of dire necessity. I believe that the " mildest " Bengalee is
glad to know that India and Afghanistan can produce
soldiers like Yakoob Khan and like Scindia, and that it is
comforting to him to reflect that the Magistrate Sahib, and
even the great Lord Sahib in Calcutta, might any day or hour
be called upon to face real peril. But I believe also, and
on sound and reasonable grounds, that Native India would
not wish to, at any rate, exchange English for Eussian rule,
although the latter might provide for India careers in life
which the former in fact refuses.

CHAPTER VII.

CAUSES OF DISQUIETUDE WITHIN THE FRONTIERS —
THE WAHABEES — AMEEROODEEN — AMEER KHAN
—JUSTICE NORMAN — LIAKUT ALI — A PRETENDED
NANA SAHIB.

If the real truth as to the Wahabees in India could have
been as clearly seen in 1870 as it can be in 1877, ^ ^^U
different course might have been taken by the Indian
Government. Seven years ago it was believed that a
Mohammedan uprising on a large scale might any day be
one of the facts of Indian life. That it would be sharply
conquered when once seen was not among the subjects
on which Englishmen allowed themselves to doubt. For
though Mohammedanism in itself was now native to the
soQ of India, Wahabeeism not only never had become
80, but was, on the ground of its extreme purism and
severity, as hateful to many well-to-do Mohammedans, as
it was to all Hindoos. Yet confidence in the power to
conquer did not imply confidence that there would not be
great destruction of life, and the Wahabees were un-
doubtedly dreaded. The Government had evidence that
a propaganda, issuing from Sittana, beyond the North West
frontier, and from Patna, one of the most famous and
excitable cities on the Ganges, had been carried to every
part of India. Skilful detectives had sought in all direc-
tions to discover the presumedly deeply-laid and widely-
spread plots. Men who had studied frontier questions.
and the remote origin of that inflammable material which,
after smouldering long, would often burst into flame in a
moment, and in many places at one time, among Mussul-

68 ENGLISH RULE AND

man races, believed that the signs of a storm were in the air.
The smoothness of the surface of the general life was counted
for little by persons who remembered the sense of security
that preceded the Mutiny, the ease with which the con-
spiracy had then been carried from place to place, and the
rapidity with which it had spread. Of the origin and
progress of the Wahabees Dr Hunter says:^ "About a
hundred and fifty years ago a young Arab pilgrim, by
name Abdool Wahab, the son of a petty Nedj chief, was
deeply struck with the profligacy of his fellow-pHgrims,
and with the endless mummeries which profaned the holy
cities. For three years he pondered over the corruptions
of Mohammedanism in Damascus, and then stepped forth
as their denouncer. He rendered himself peculiarly hate-
ful to the creatures of the Constantinople court, accusing
the Turkish doctors of making the written word of no
effect by their traditions (Sanat), and the Turkish people
of being worse than the infidels by reason of their vices."
Driven from city to city, he at length "formed a small
Arab league, and raised the standard of revolt against the
Government of Constantinople, and of protest against her
corrupted creed."

He became, in fact, an extreme reformer, and a denouncer
of sin; and as the Soonis, themselves puritan, were numer-
ous in India, and fierce in certain districts, the Wahabees
had a clear field for their propaganda, so long as moral and
not political aims were avowed by them. The Wahabee
leader died in 1787, after an extraordinary series of
victories over his more easy and orthodox co-religionists
and the races that bowed to the once all-powerful sway.

'' It was Mehemet All, Pasha of Egypt, who succeeded in arresting
the victorious advance of the hated puritans.^ In 18 12 Medina was
taken from them by storm. Mecca fell in 1813 ; and five yean later
this vast power which had so miraculously sprung up, as miraculously
vanished, like a shifting sand-mountain of the desert. The Wahabees,
now a scattered and a homeless sect, profess doctrines hateful to the
well-to-do classes of Mohammedans. In formal divinity they are the

1 '* Oar Indian Mussulmans." ^ Jh,

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 69

Unitarians of Islam. They refuse divine attributes to Mahomet, for-
bid prayers in his name, and denounce supplications to departed
saints. It is their earnest practical theology, however, that contains
the secret of their strength. They boldly insist upon a return to the
faith of the primitive Mohammedan Church, to its simplicity of man-
ners, its purity of morals, and its determination to spread the truth,
at whatever expense of the blood of the infidel, and at whatever sacri-
fice of their own lives."

In directing attention, however, to the Wahabee camp
on the frontier, and to the propaganda within, Dr Hunter
insisted also on the sad condition of the Mussulman
population of India. Where English rule, he said, had
existed longest, there the Mohammedans had sunk lowest.
They could acquire wealth, but save in exceptional cases
they could not be induced to accept English education,
and the glory of their race had gone. This was a very
fair, as it was a very painful, statement of the case; and it
was strengthened by some pictures fearfully startling of
the decay of old Mohammedan families of high position.
The book is well worth reading. A thousand facts went,
and still go, to prove that if a great orthodox leader
appeared in the name of the Prophet, we should have to
face a huge danger. But the Wahabees are heterodox —
the Tenth Monarchy men of Islam — and there cannot be a
doubt that but for English interference in Arabia in 1873,
the Porte would have striven hard to exterminate them.
In 1858 Sir Sydney Cotton, with 5000 British troops,
stormed the camp of the Wahabees at Sittana, and razed
the villages of their allies.^ After this for a time the fire
smouldered, and seemed to be extinguished; but it again
burst out, and in such a way that the Government decided to
attack the propaganda in India itself, from whence there was
no doubt that money in large amounts was sent to Sittana.

In the year 1870 a tedious trial at Malda ended in the
conviction of a man named Ameeroodeen, a man whose
principles and eflForts were strongly brought out in an
official report of great pitifulness, by Mr Eeilly, district

^ There was a second expedition ten years later.

70 ENGLISH RULE AND

superintendent of police, and an able officer. The Waha-
bee propaganda began, he said, in Malda, about twenty-five
years previously, in the preaching of Velayut Ally of Patna,
a Kalifa or lieutenant of the Wahabees. He visited the
district, and appointed as Kalifa Abdool Eahman, who
opened a school, and taught children, and preached the
jehad — the holy war against infidels. Among his leading
supporters was Euflfeek Mondul of Narinpore, the father of
the Moulvie Ameeroodeen. EuflFeek Mondul devoted his
son to the priesthood, and in due time Ameeroodeen was
made Kalifa, and began those labours which were so fatal
to him. Euffeek Mondul, at the time the story was told
(1871), was seventy years of age, and in his dotage; and
though the fire of enthusiasm still broke out, in view of
the principles to which he had devoted his life, he could
hardly be counted dangerous. There were those, however,
this report said, who remembered the old man as foremost
in the indigo disputes, and spending both time and money
in opposition to the exactions of the planters, fighting every
battle to the bitter end, even in the High Court and before
the Sudder Eevenue Board of Calcutta, and never yielding
a foot of ground while he was able to maintain it. The
rent laws were put in force against him; the Ganges over-
flowed its banks and swept away his property; he was
brought to the verge of ruin. Once, at the funeral of a
Mondul, where hundreds of people had assembled, Eufifeek
Mondul stood upon a white ant hill, and denounced
another Mondul, rich and influential, as unworthy to take
part in the ceremony. The accused demanded an explana-
tion. EuflFeek Mondul boldly asked him if he had not
taken usury from his co-religionists contrary to the pre-
cepts of the Koran. The question was a charge. Wit-
nesses were present to prove it, and the accused was not
restored to communion with his sect till he signed a bond
renouncing for ever the sin of usury. When Ameeroodeen
was condemned, the fine old man embraced him, and bade
him keep firm to the faith. This is an abridgment of the

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 71

story told by one of the enemies of the Wahabees. If
such a story had been told of Greece or Eome, or any
nation or race that had lived hundreds of years ago, it would
have been among the lessons of Oxford and Cambridge
— a story termed classical. That the liistory will some
day be read with just pride in India, when India knows its
own most honourable records, I take to be among the
certainties of life. Can any one, whatever his views, help
feeling for those two men, father and son? Is there an
Englishman anywhere who would refuse to petition the
Indian Government, or the Government at home, beseeching
them, if Ameeroodeen still lives, to find some means for his
rele,ase ? We may be boimd, for the safeguard of society,
to punish rebellion, whatever its cause or justification;
but are we not also bound by the highest laws to admire
such heroism and self-sacrifice as these men evinced?
Tried, and condemned, in a dusky little court, imder circum-
stances of which even Englishmen in India knew little,
and Englishmen at home nothing at all, I think the name
and fame of Ameeroodeen, and of his gallant old father,
will not readily die.

While this drama was being played to its end, a number
of other persons were imprisoned, or kept in imprisonment,
on a charge of Wahabeeism ; and among them two notable
men, named Ameer Khan and Hashmadad Khan, whose
trials attracted general attention. A petition at the end of
1870, presented to the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, stated that the petitioners, aged men living in
Calcutta, "were in July 1869 suddenly arrested by order
of the Government, and could not ascertain the charge.
They applied to Mr Justice Norman for a writ of Imheas
corpus in order to be released, and under the Bengal Eegu-
lation III. of 18 18, and of the Indian Acts 34 of 1850 and
III. of 1858, he refused to grant the writ. An appeal was
to be made to the Supreme Court, but as the vacation was
at hand and the applicants in gaol, the present petition
waa lodged. After the petition was presented information

72 ENGLISH RULE AND

had been received from India that the appeal had been
heard and dismissed." This new phase of the question
necessitated an amendment of the petition, but indeed the
action of the Judicial Committee has little place in this nar-
rative. The case remained with the Indian law courts ; and
in them the drama was played out, at an enormous cost to
the prisoners. Mr Chisholm Anstey, then practising in
Bombay, since dead, made the application to Mr Justice
Norman, and made it in speeches so fiercely denunciatory
of Lord Mayo and his Government, that it was difficult to
believe he had the slightest hope of the writ being granted.
The standing counsel, Mr Paul, having eulogised Lord
Mayo as a nobleman who had left ease and comfort at
home to give his services to India, Mr Anstey " hoped his
learned friend would for that glowing panegyric be re-
warded in the next world as he was sure to be in this."
Of a claim which he held Lord Mayo was making to
irresponsible power, he said: "Finch and his atrpcious
crew, in their endeavours to put down the just rights of the
people, used the very same language. 'Who shaU com-
mand the king ?' said Lord Finch. ' Why,' replied those
glorious old Puritans, ' the law shaU command your king/
So if my learned friend asks, * Who shaU command Lord
Mayo?' I say, the law shall command Lord Mayo. He
cannot be irresponsible and remain a British subject." Mr
Anstey was assisted very zealously by two gentlemen of
the Calcutta bar, and assuredly every effort was made for
the accused ; but on the 24th August Mr Norman gave an
adverse decision, and in September the Supreme Court
rejected the motion for permission to appeal Mr Anstey
meanwhile had moved for a writ of mainprise, that the pri-
soners might be admitted to bail That too had been refused.
Late in December or early in January the prisoners were
set free from Alipore gaol, but while they were marvelling
at their good fortune they were re-arrested at the prison
doors. It had been discovered that their apprehension six
months earlier had been on a Grovemor General's warrant.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 73

about which there was some question. The cup of hope
was held to their lips and then dashed away. They were
re-arrested on a magistrate's warrant, and were eventually
tried before a civilian judge (Mr Prinsep) at Patna, where
the offences were alleged to have been committed, and
were sentenced to imprisonment for life. In August 1871
an application was made for a suspension of the sentence
pending an appeal, and the case was to be heard in Sep-
tember before Mr Justice Norman, whom the Moham-
medans, in consequence of the position he had been
compelled to take as the Acting Chief Justice, considered
their undoubted enemy. Before passing to what, I fear,
was a terrible consequence of tliis belief, a few facts in
relation to the chief, because the wealthier, of the two
prisoners, Ameer Khan, may be interesting.

He was a Mussulman banker and money-lender of a
kind well known in India, and was beyond doubt very
wealthy. A highly-honourable European merchant in
Calcutta told me that he once, having business to transact
with the old man, foimd him seated luxuriously in a sort
of state, on a dais which the visitor was told he must not
approach without taking off his shoes. Of course he
declined to do that, but the fact shows the manner of life
of Ameer Khan. I by chance saw the old man some
months after his sentence, picking jute or oakum in the
great gaol of Calcutta. He never, I was told, spoke to any
one from morning to night, but incessantly muttered some-
thing to himself, and glanced, as we saw him glance,
furtively from under a very contracted forehead. The
contrast of the two pictures was painful. I believe he
was guilty, either as a principal or as an agent, of suppljdng
money to the propaganda, and I never heard anything
in his favour at all like what has been stated of EufiFeek
Mondul and Ameeroodeen. But the long imprisonment
without trial, the re-arrest at Alipore, and the removal
from the jurisdiction of the highest courts of law to the
court of a civilian judge, able and respected though he was

74 ENGLISH RULE AND

as an officer, did not give one the idea of that impartial
dignity of the law which is one of the best claims of
England to her supremacy in India. Nor is it easy to
escape the belief that Lord Mayo, by whatever advice he
acted, was in this case primarily to blame.^

About eleven o'clock on the morning of September 20th,
Mr Justice Norman was murdered. He had driven as
usual to the High Court, where he was to hear appeals,
and had turned round at the top of the great stair to give
some direction to his servant, when a man rushed from
one of the doorways and stabbed him deeply on the left
shoulder. Turning, with a faint cry, to defend himself, he
was again stabbed ; and, it was stated in evidence that the
blows in both cases were given with the unerring certainty
indicative of a man who had probably studied the art of
murder. Utterly helpless, the poor judge ran down the
steps, followed by the assassin, who brandished his knife
and dared any one to approach him. After some little time,
however, he was struck down by a native workman, captured,
and committed for trial Mr Norman lingered for some
hours in great pain ; then he fell into a merciful uncon-
sciousness, and died at about one o'clock in the morning.
The door of the house to which he had been carried was all
this time surrounded by his friends, and the grief for his
sad end was, I am sure, both general and sincere. He had
been known as a kind and humane man, as well as an
upright judge ; the idea of any prejudice against the Mo-
hammedans influencing his decisions was everywhere dis-
missed as preposterous. He was buried on the following
evening ; the coffin was earned by six English sailors; the
service was read by Archdeacon Pratt (a distinguished clergy-
man, since dead) ; the city was in mourning; the cemetery
crowded by men of all races and creeds known in Calcutta ;
the minute-guns booming from Fort William. And it was
told, amid all, how the judge when suffering most, had desired
the Lord's Prayer to be said with him, and had paused

1 Th^ prisoners were released on the proclamation of the Queen as Empress.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 75

and twice repeated, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive them that trespass against us" — a lesson not with-
out value in India.

I was present at the trial of the prisoner, and noted
ceitain peculiarities in his appearance and conduct. He
was short and strongly built, and his countenance seemed
to me of a Jewish cast. His head rose, from a rather low
forehead, to a cone in shape like a sugar-loaf inclining back-
ward, or a Parsee's hat. His eye was cold and glassy, and
though at times fierce, was never bright. The manner in
which he questioned the native witnesses was extraor-
dinary. The questions, "Where was I?" — "Where was
Norman Sahib ?" — "Where were you ?" — "Is that (pointing to
the table) the knife?" startled people by their defiant auda-
city. The knife, a long, tapering Ghoorka weapon, seemed
to interest the prisoner much in the way that a new
specimen might interest a scientific man. The Advocate
General, Mr Graham, conducted the prosecution, as he had
conducted the Wahabee trials, with a temper and dignity
which were highly spoken of by both Natives and Euro-
peans. The Hivdoo Patriot said: "Nothing could be more
impressive than the stem rules of an English court of
justice, which would not deny a fair and open trial to the
basest criminal. The man is arrested by the police and
taken before the coroner. He is allowed every opportunity
to cross-examine the witnesses and prove liis innocence.
He is again brought up before the magistrate, where the
same form is observed. At the High Court he is allowed
to challenge the jury, and to examine the witnesses to any
length he likes. The Advocate General, who conducts the
prosecution, exhorts the jury to dismiss from their minds
what they had heard outside, and to bring in their verdict
without bias and in good conscience." Here also was a
lesson of great worth.

Tlie prisoner when first arrested had answered in some
Oriental jargon, such as, "The earth is sunk below tlie
waters ; the men have gone to the skies ; the dog is eating

76 ENGLISH RULE AND

the wall " — ^probably under the influence of bhang. Then
he became silent; but from first to last nothing further was
elicited from him. The Advocate General wisely confined
his questions to proving the murder, and abandoned, if he
ever had entertained, any hope of discovering the motive
for the crime. That a very uneasy feeling prevailed
throughout India is certain. People saw in the murder
the beginning of a system of warfare in which one man
of a body of Thugs of a new order would draw a lot which
would condemn him to give his life, if need be, to destroy
that of some distinguished Englishman. Looking at all
the circumstances of the case, with many notes before me,
I have no doubt that the cause of the murder was the Wa-
habee trials. That the prisoners Ameer Khan and Hash-
madad Khan were concerned in the act, their friends held
to be to the last degree improbable, since such a deed was
sure to remove, as it did remove, their last hope of mercy.
There is not much perhaps in the argument as applied to
such impulsive races, but at all events no one had any
right to even hint at the criminality of these men to the
extent of participation in this murder. The idea of the
new order of Thuggee passed away, but it was revived a
little later by the murder of the Governor General

About the same time another strange story was made
public. In July (1871) the police had apprehended, at
the Bombay railway station, a man who had for some time
been watched as a preacher of treason, and who was then
about to leave for the North Western Provinces. Treason-
able documents were found in his possession, with a bamboo
staff filled with small ingots of gold, in value about £200,
and a bag of money. In a little while he was found to be
the notorious Liakut Ali, who had proclaimed the King of
Delhi at Allahabad in the crisis of the Mutiny. He was
described as a good-looking man, proud of his looks, eager
to be photographed, and quite easy as to the danger of his
position. It was as late as May 1872 before the Govern-
ment ventured to bring him to trial, but then the evidence

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 77

against him was overwhelming. The charges were : " That
you are accused of complicity in the rebellion of 1857 ; that
during the month of June 1857 7^^ ^^^^ a court and camp
at the Khoosroo Bagh, Allahabad, and headed the mutineers;
and that you subsequently took the field against the troops
of Her Majesty." The prisoner was advised to plead guilty
with extenuating circumstances, and he did so, apparently
with the same coolness with which for fifteen years he had
roamed about India.

"I acknowledge," he said, "having been a leader of rebels
in June 1857. I also acknowledge having had a camp in the
Khoosroo garden. I was engaged in a fight with the British
troops. I wish to say that beyond engaging in fight I did
not cause any further loss. I saved the lives of gentlemen
and ladies. I saved the life of a lady at Cawnpore. Owing
to fear of the Nana I clothed her in Hindostani clothes and
pretended she was my sister. When the Nana Sahib was
defeated I went to Furruckabad. The rebels sent two
cannons and two companies after me to kill me and the
mem sahib (the lady). I sent her off on a doolee as soon
as I saw the soldiers coming, and myself went towards
them. They arrested and took me back to Furruckabad.
Their ofiicers held a court on me, and decided to blow me
away from a gun as a loyal subject of the English. Some
of my men explained to the Mussulman sepoys that I was
not a well-wisher of the English." " Did you consider your-
self under the orders of any one ?" he was asked. " I consi-
dered myself subordinate to Bahadoor Shah, King of Delhi."

Doubtful as part of this at first seemed, it was substanti-
ally confirmed by witnesses. The woman referred to by
the prisoner said, that in May 1857 she with her mother,
stepfather, and five brothers and a sister, removed from
Lucknow to Cawnpore for protection, and that they were
in the intrenchment till the surrender of General Wheeler.
They then attempted to escape in boats, but she was seized
by a native and forcibly carried off, just before the boats
were fired upon, and was barely saved from the massacre.

78 ENGLISH RULE AND

She was taken before the Moulvie, Liakut Ali — the prisoner,
she believed, though he was not then grey ; and a little
later she heard the firing which was the death-knell of her
friends. Having exchanged her European dress for a native
one, and received a little blanket-tent for her residence, she
remained there till the British approached, when she was
hurried away with the retreating rebels. She was removed
from Cawnpore to Bithoor, and then further up country ;
but the party returned on hearing of the fall of Delhi At
Futtehghur she was told that she was to be blown from a
gun, and she escaped at night with a sowar who had her in
charge, but, she felt confident, with the connivance of the
Moulvie, whom, however, she never had seen again till she
saw him then on his trial.

For ten months this woman was carried about from place
to place, and at last was handed over to her friends at
Allahabad. Her evidence undoubtedly saved the life of the
Moulvie, who was sentenced to transportation, and sent to
the Andamans. Here then had this man, with a capital
charge hanging over him, been wandering over India from
1857 to 1870. What, it was said, is there unreasonable in
supposing that the Nana himself may have been similarly
engaged. False Nanas indeed had sprung up, and the cry
of wolf had so often been raised that the fashion had long
been to say authoritatively that the Nana had died in the
Terai of Nepal; and though the assertion when examined
was found to have no basis whatever, beyond the belief
that he could not have escaped so long with such a reward
offered for his capture, the words still passed from lip to
lip as a popular faith.

I was about leaving India in 1874, when a telegram in-
formed me that the real Nana had at last been caught at
Morar, and that besides confessing himself the Nana he
had been identified by the Maharajah Scindia. I saw
Colonel Mowbray Thompson, one of the four heroic sur-
vivors of Gener^ Wheeler's force in 1857, ^^^ found that
he had been summoned to Morar to examine the man who

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 79

had claimed the dangerous tide ; and for Morar I also at
once started. On the 28th October I saw the presumed
Nana, and a man who had been captured with him, sitting
on their haunches in a soi-t of cage, in the lines of the 26th
Cameronians — two miserable-looking beings, gibbering and
talking incessantly, and calling gods and men to witness
the hard usage to which they were subjected. The only
hardship I saw was in the savage looks of the sturdy
Cameronian guard. The pretended Nana, however, seemed
to have a perpetual laugh on his lips, and he hardly for
a moment ceased protesting : " I am not the Nana. How
can I lie ? " He had, it was stated, arrived at Morar as a
fakeer, among many fakeers, for the Doorga festival ; and
having been addressed as the Nana by some of Scindia's
troopers, had confessed that they were right, and there-
upon had written as the Nana to Scindia, and claimed his
protection. The Maharajah, the account ran, immediately
ordered out a body of cavalry, and surrounded the pre-
tender. The letter had stated that the writer, after wan-
dering in the jungles in great wretchedness for many years,
had at last determined to throw himself on Scindia's protec-
tion (" lay his head in Scindia's lap "), and would do what-
ever he was bidden. All this seemed very straightforward.
It was necessary, however, for several reasons, that Scindia
should act with caution. In the first place, the real Nana, if
he lived, was head of the Mahrattas, as the representative of
the late Peishwa of Bithoor, Bajee Eao, and in tliat capacity
was the head of Scindia's own race. If the Nana was dead,
no one living could take precedence of Scindia in the claim
to the coveted headship. In the former case, however,
and granting that this was the real Nana, it was by no
means a small matter to Scindia how his impulsive war-
like people would view the surrender by him, a chief of the
Mahrattas, of a Mahratta who by right of rank claimed
his fealty. When the two met, Scindia said, "Do you
know me?" and the fakeer replied, "Yes, you are Scindia."
• Can you," he asked further, " tell me anything whereby I

8o ENGLISH RULE AND

can be assured you are the Nana." The man said he
could, and thereupon he related particulars of a private,
and, as I gathered, sacred ceremony, in which when the
two were yoimg men, Scindia had presented the Nana with
a tulwar (sword), in acknowledgment of the higher rank
of the latter. These facts the Maharajah Scindia himself
stated to me. Colonel Willoughby Osborne kindly interpret-
ing. The Maharajah also repeated the expression of his
belief that the prisoner was, as he professed to be, the real
Nana. The surrender had been made to Scindia at his
palace of Lushkur, to which reference will be made here-
after, and the prisoners were sent to Morar. Colonel
Osborne, the Political Eesident, accompanied the escort to
the cantonment, where the two men were handed over to
the general in command. I was also present at two
examinations, which were at least curious.

Sahib Apbey,^ a Gwalior noble in Scindia's service, and
from sixty-five to seventy years of age, stated that his
son married the daughter of Bajee Rao Peishwa, and that
the Nana, who had been adopted as the son and heir of
Bajee Eao, was held to be brother to the Peishwa's daughter.
That the prisoner was the veritable Nana he had no doubt;
and he had, he said, been in daily intercourse with the
Nana for about a month and a half during the marriage
ceremonies which took place in the palace at Bithoor
during the Hoolee festival in the year Sumbut, 1913 —
month Phagua, corresponding to March- April, 1856. Wit-
ness, although he had not seen the Nana either before or
since that time, professed to have at once recognised a
scar on his forehead. So positive was he that, when
appealed to by the prisoner, he simply smiled and said,
" But you are the Nana."

Unn&, a Brahmin, son of Narain, otherwise termed
Baba Bhut, "the Nana's own brother," identified the
prisoner as his uncle, who had been adopted by the
Peishwa, Bajee Rao, as his son and heir. This witness

> I have some doubt as to the speUing of this name.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 8i

stated that he last saw the Nana at Bithoor before
the Mutiny, when he himself was about ten years of
age; but long as that was ago, he could testify that the*
prisoner was beyond all dispute the same maa Colonel
Mowbray Thompson, after some preliminary remarks as to
the official directions which had led to his journey to
Morar, said : " I stated that if he was the man, I should
recognise him by a scar on the forehead. Captain Wolsely,
brigade-major, said, ' He has such a mark,' and asked me
on which side of the head it was. I replied I had for-
gotten that. I must say, on first seeing the prisoner,
notwithstanding the presence of the scar alluded to, I did
not think him the man he was said to be. He was so
changed — being much thinner, well bearded, with long
unkempt hair — appearing a most disreputable fellow,
cringing and humble, and utterly dififerent to what I
remember him in his glory at Bithoor. I asked, however,
that he might be shaved and dressed in the clothes of a
Mahratta gentleman. This was done, and of course changed
his appearance materially, and made him strangely like
what I remember of the Nana of Bithoor. Still I cannot
go so far as to swear he is the man. All I can say is, the
likeness is extraordinary, and the presence of the scar a
most strange coincidence." Dr Barnard said : " I entered
the cell of the prisoner supposed to be the Nana Sahib,
and carefully examined him from head to foot. I don't
know that I ever saw this man before. I saw the Nana
twice or three times during the summer of 1856 at Cawn-
pore, but only in his carriage at the band, or on the mall
in the dusk of the evening ; and I have no recollection of
him, excepting that he was a yoimg-looking man, of the
ordinary lightish-brown complexion of the better class of
natives of Hindostan. 1 know I could not recognise him
now."

Indisputable evidence that the man was not the Nana
was given by Dr Tressider, a medical officer, who had
attended the Nana professionally, and in the operation of

F

82 ENGLISH RULE AND

cupping had left an indelible scar, no trace of which was
on the prisoner. In a few days the impression was general
that we had made another error. The question was, what
did it mean ? Some doubted the good faith of Scindia —
an ungenerous and unfair view, and one that Lord Noi-th-
brook promptly and unhesitatingly evinced was not shared
by the Indian Government. Some thought that the im-
position was a stratagem to test Scindia, and that if he
had said, " Yes, I will protect you," the tnie Nana would
have appeared. Others again, returning to the " undoubted
death of the Nana in the Terai of Nepal," held that the
whole affair rested on the passion for notoriety of a silly
fakeer, drunk with bhang. Of Scindia's good faith it was
hardly possible to entertain a doubt, after fairly consider-
ing all the facts. If, however, I had had such a doubt, it
would have been removed by a conversation I afterwards
had at Agra with Scindia's loyal adviser in the Mutiny,
Sir Dinkur Kao, " the honourable and true man — the man
of his word" — of the Mahrattas. He did not of course
say anything definitely as to a person whom he had not seen,
but he expressed an imhesitating opinion that the evidence
at that time — before Dr Tressider's statement was known
— was immensely in favour of the view that we had caught
the Nana.

I cannot help thinking that the second of the views
stated above may some day be found to have be^a the
correct one, and that a man in some respects not unlike the
Nana was induced to personate him for the purpose either
of privately securing the protection claimed, or of leading
Scindia into a pitfall. I shall not readily forget the way
in which the old man, " Sahib Apbey," put on his spec-
tacles and said, with a triumphant grin, " You're the Nana."
The effect of the Nana's name on the people, I believe,
was for a few days almost magical. I had taken from Cid-
cutta an intelligent Mohammedan servant, who teased me
hourly with, " Sahib, can't I wm see the Nana ? " At last
I said, " Dear me, yes ; come, and I will ask for pennis-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 83

sion." We obtained the permission, and saw " the Nana,"
but the man's disappointment was woful. He shook his
head gently but firmly. " No, no, sahib," he said, " Ae not
the Nana." I have narrated these facts chiefly in their
relation to the story of Liakut Ali ; but apart from that,
they have their own significance. The first impression of
satisfaction in all English minds that the murderer had
been caught, gave place to a strong suspicion that there
was more in the affair than appeared on the surface. That
this suspicion was warranted by the circumstances of the
case, I still believe, though before I reached Morar I had
reason to conclude that whatever was signified in the
man's mock confession, the one thing not signified was
that we had caught the real criminal. I can see nothing
in the least improbable in the Nana still being alive in
a land where the seclusion of households is carried out
to such perfection; and I do not think it is from any
mere spirit of revenge that sensible, not to say himiane,
Englishmen would have rejoiced to know that the great
criminal had been caught. Subsequently, in Calcutta, a
Hindoo gentleman of high character and honour said to
me jocularly : " How dreadfully eager you all are to catch
the Nana. Cannot you, after all this time, dismiss him
from your minds, and commit the Mutiny and all its be«
longings to history?" That, however, cannot well be unless
by a miracle of some kind. K Tantia Topee had escaped,
few Englishmen would have felt very bitterly towards him ;
but as a matter of simple fact, the feeling towards the
Nana can only pass away when this generation is gone.
Yet if the Nana lives, no one need envy him his lot since
1857. It can hardly, even under the best circumstances,
have been other than a living death.

CHAPTER VIII.

INDEPENDENT CHIEFS — SCINDIA AND HOLKAR — SIR
DINKUR RAO — MOHAMMEDAN OPINION — GWALIOR
AND JHANSI.

While the identification of the pretended Nana was in
question, I availed myself of the opportunity of seeing and
learning a little of the great country of the once dreaded
Mahrattas. The Gwalior territory, watered by the Chumbal,
the Nerbudda, and the Taptee, comprises large tracts of
land naturally fertile; but either because the population is
too sparse to provide the necessary labour, or too warlike
to brook peaceful pursuits, comparatively little of it is culti-
vated. The Political Eesident at Morar informed me that
Scindia had offered to lease land on terms which would at
once have made a poor cultivator wealthy, but that in few
cases had the offers been accepted. The Bengalee, who would
have instantly perceived the value of the inducements, was
too much wedded to Bengal to throw in his lot with the
Mahrattas, while Scindia's own subjects were first of all
soldiers. In the middle of a vast plain, not unlike a lion
recumbent, the Great Fort of Gwalior appears by its very
form and position to have been created by nature for the
dominance it has so long maintained. At the foot of the
rock, under the very nose of the silent stone lion, are
Scindia's old and new towns of Lushkur. The cantonment
of Morar is about six miles distant, in the contrary direc-
tion, nearer to Jhansi. It was at Lushkur that the Eanee
of Jhansi, one of our most terrible and inexorable enemies
during the Mutiny, died on the battlefield, fighting us, like
the indomitable woman she was, to the last In tlie far

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 85

distance are the Jhansi hills, terribly suggestive to an
Englishman.

The origin of the chieftains, Scindia and his neighbour
Holkar of Indore, was lowly enough, judged from a Western
standard, and in India has only been counterbalanced, not
altogether redeemed, by great capacity, which always
stands below pedigree. It should never be forgotten, if
we would understand the mainsprings of difficulty and
danger in India, that there is no right of Hindoos more
sacred than that of adoption. The Nana Sahib was the
adopted son merely of the head of the Mahrattas ; but his
title to headship was nowhere disputed. Neither Holkar
nor Scindia, though direct heirs, had the same title which
the adopted son of Bajee Eao had, though they have pedigree
sprung from imdoubted courage and skill in perilous times.
Mulliar Eao Holkar was the son of a herdsman, who, about
1730, rose to power imder that Bajee Rao who himself had
risen, though with caste on his side, from the rank of prime
minister to supreme ruler among his warrior race. This is
referred to in an earlier chapter. Holkar was a man so swift
and terrible in war that territory was allotted to him, and
he became a chief. Ranajee Scindia, though said to be
allied to noble families in Eajpootana, was a menial servant ;
but being faithful, courageous, and able, he too was made
a chief and a ruler of many villages. Dr Eussell, writing
from the scenes of the Mutiny in 1857, said :

"When the mutinies broke out, Scindia and Holkar,
whose territories are conterminous and closely adjacent
to the disturbed districts, remained faithful to our cause ;
and the former, by far the more powerful of the two, dis-
played considerable judgment as well as loyalty in the
policy he pursued. In virtue of the arrangements subsist-
ing between him and the British Government, he main-
tained from the revenues of his principality a compact and
well-disciplined force as a contingent available in aid of
the Bengal army. This force, now so notorious under the
name of the Gwalior contingent, was organised and officered

86 ENGLISH RULE AND

exactly like our own sepoy regiments, and proved true to
its model in all respects by joining in the Mutiny at a very
early period. ... In June 1858 the commander-in-
chief notified in a general order his 'high gratification'
that the town and fort of Gwalior had been conquered by
Major General Sir Hugh Bose. On the 20th of June the
Maharajah Scindia, attended by the Governor General's
agent for Central India and Sir Hugh Eose, and escorted
by British troops, was restored to the palace of his ances-
tors, and was welcomed by his subjects with every mark of
loyalty and attachment. It was on June ist that the rebels,
aided by the treachery of some of Maharajah Scindia's troops,
seized the capital of his Highness' kingdom, and hoped to
establish a new government under a pretender in his High-
ness' territory. Eighteen days had not elapsed before they
were compelled to evacuate the town and fort of GwaUor,
and to relinquish the authority which they had endeavoured
to usurp."

This is very satisfactory, and England's debt to Scindia,
among other chiefs, is not overstated. Yet twenty years
after the Mutiny we still keep possession of the Fort of
Gwalior. Scindia has, it is true, the palace, which, how-
ever, he decUnes to use, and his flag flies from the flagstaff,
and salutes are fired on his birthday and fitt days ; but
the garrison is British. Sir Dinkur Eao, in speaking on
this subject, made no secret of his conviction that we had
not kept faith with India. The remarks of the great
old statesman were kindly interpreted to me by the Com-
missioner at Agra, Mr Drummond. My object was simply
to know and learn from Sir Dinkur Eao; but there was a dis-
tinct understanding that I should state whatever I deemed
of public usefulness ; and on this understanding I wrote
on the subject in MacmUlan's Magazine in 1875. I said
that Sir Dinkur Eao, though now perhaps best known in
England as one of the judges of the Guikwar of Baroda, has
for twenty years stood foremost among his people as a man
both of abiUty and probity ; that his character might partly

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 87

be judged from the fact that he learned the English lan-
guage in eleven months, with no text-book but the " Wealth
of Nations ;" and that his views on many subjects might be
divined from the fact that he gave up his use of the English
language on the avowed ground that Englishmen had ceased
to do justice to his country. He is a man short, slender,
and now aged, with an extraordinarily quick eye, and a
grave, calm, kind face. He spoke slowly and carefully,
apparently weighing every word, but with the utmost
decision, and with a noble scorn of secrecy. His loyalty
is unquestioned. In the Mutiny, as we have seen, he cast
the die for himself and Scindia, and again and again the
lives of both were in extreme peril in consequence of this
decision. Lord Canning said of him : " Of all the men
I liave met, no one has impressed me more with a sense
of natural ability ; " and I think a distinguished living
witness to the same effect could be foimd in Lord Law-
rence. Mr Drummond said, " He is the Nestor of India ;
every word he speaks is pregnant with wisdom." And
again, " In the Mutiny he was deemed the Englishman's
friend. When the mutineers of the Gwalior contingent
had murdered their officers, they rushed into Scindia's
presence waving their bloody swords, and called for
Dinkur Eao to be given up to them as the firm friend
of the English Grovemment Scindia was firm (Dinkur
Bao was sitting behind him), and said, 'No, he is my
servant, and no one shall touch him.' Dinkur Bao then
at once sent out the fiery cross (pukar) to the Eajpoots,
whom he had made his firm friends by his justice, courtesy,
and good revenue managemelit, and he was answered by
the appearance of io,cxx> Rajpoots of the fighting clans,
who told him that io,(XX) more were ready at a word.
Armed with matchlock, sword, and shield, they were a
match for the rebels." The people honour Sir Dinkur
Bao with a great honour, as the wise man of their race.

The good old man spoke somewhat mournfully and sadly
when he depicted what he deemed a great change for the

88 ENGLISH RULE AND

worse in the character of English rule in India. " You are
not now," he said, "true to your word. Once your word was
as if it were written on a stone tablet with an iron pen.
Now I speak of it as a promissory note. You promise and
do not fulfil." I thought then, and for some time, that
the reference was to Gwalior; but I have since been led
to believe that it had a much wider range, and related,
amid much else, both to Gwalior and the confiscations in
Oude. I could say much more of Sir Dinkur Eao than
my space will admit, but as it is, his name will recur
again in another chapter. Between him and the Com-
missioner at Agra (a man who showed his confidence in
the people by remaining outside the fort with his family
during the Mutiny) there seemed to be a fast friendship,
honourable to both. I met also in Agra a well-read
Mohammedan gentleman who had visited England, and
he courteously gave me, in quite a pile of papers, his view
of public affairs, especially with reference to the hardships
of the people in the North Western Provinces and Oude.

Do not, he said, "believe that the educated people of
India of any race or faith undervalue the benignant rule of
the British Government; but England, too, has advantages
from the union, and ought to accept the duty of looking to
the happiness of the people placed under her protection by
the Almighty God." He maintained that the confidence
between England and India had diminished, as their inter-
course had increased. India, he said, was yearly becom-
ing poorer, and under the Queen's government had lost
many of the advantages it possessed imder that of the
East India Company. In Oude annexation meant the
sudden resumption of pensions, granted, in some cases,
ages previously, by native rulers; and many persons, who
before annexation were wealthy, were now old and infirm,
begging in the streets of Lucknow, while many had " died
off in indigence and wretchedness." There might, he
granted, be soimd political reasons for resuming some
pensions; but so many persons, once in affluence, and

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 89

now in poverty, he held, inflamed and distui*bed the minds
of the people, and destroyed all hope of permanent loyalty.
The competitive examinations, this gentleman also main-
tained, were sending an inferior class of Englishmen into
India — "men not to be compared with the Lawrences,
Montgomery, M'Leod, and Durand. Yet while the men
were inferior, their power was greater, and appeal from their
decisions was all but impossible." One case was given of
property having been confiscated on the ground of pai'tici-
pation in the Mutiny, in the direct face of a recorded legal
verdict of not guilty. These and like statements made in
this memoranda passed the eye of an English officer of
high rank, and were revised by him. The great allega-
tion of all, however, in the statements of this Mohammedan
gentleman, is that the Government have no machinery
whereby to test the real feeling of the people. We have
nothing now, he said, that answers to the judgment-seat
of great rulers like Akbar, who dispensed justice in per-
son, and checked interested judgments on the part of the
officers employed.

I give these statements as the views of an educated, and,
I have reason to believe, honest man; and they will, I
think, have additional interest if the reader will bear them
in mind as a key to some facts yet to be stated with
reference to the Mutiny. In 1858 Lord Stanley wrote a
despatch on the measures necessary for the pacification,
after the annexation of Oude, and in particular recom-
mended conciliation and a strict regard for those very
interests to which my Mohammedan friend says there has
not been paid any regard whatever. One of the bitterest
and commonest complaints I found in my intercourse with
Native India, was that Englishmen in these times seem
to have no conception, as Englishmen of old had, of the
existence of such persons as Hindoo and Mohammedan
gentlemen. The traditions of the Company were of at least
an outward and visible regard for native forms of life.
This rule, it was said, exists no longer. Often thoroughly

90 ENGUSH RULE AND

polite themselves, the gentlemen of India are shocked to
find, that while the forms of English life are more exact in
India than in England, the forms of native life are often
trampled under foot. I do not think it may be out of
place, in view of this opinion, to refer incidentally to the
fact, which no one travelling through India can well over-
look, that the little groups of English people, men, women,
and children, scattered over the country, are every year
becoming more numerous, and of necessity more isolated,
as trade increases, and railways are extended. Is it not
becoming more and more necessary, even on this ground of
pure self-preservation and comfort, that there should be
reminders that Native India thinks we are falling off from
the best features of a Company which was very far from
being altogether good?

I drove from Morar to Lushkur and Gwalior on a beauti-
ful morning a little before day-dawn, along a road lined
with trees, and even then crowded with peopla Lushkur,
a purely Mahratta city (the term signifying camp or army),
was in old times to the fort of Gwalior what the village
was to the feudal castle of old in England — ^the villagers
were both the vassals and retainers of the lords of Gwalior.
Within what appears but a stone's throw from the fort, but
really 600 yards from our No. i Battery, and entirely com-
manded by it, is Scindia's new palace, at the time I saw it
. very nearly finished, and likely to be one of the most
luxurious and beautiful buildings in India or anywhere.
In general outline it gave one at first sight the idea of the
Tuileries, but with all that provision for coolness, quietude,
ease, the luxury of baths, and the charm of flower-gardens,
carried to such a high art in Pompeii in the days of the
most luxurious of the Eomans. Within and without were
flower-beds, and ingenious plans for defying the heat of the
sun, for amusements suited to every season, for receptions,
and indeed for whatever the heart of man could desire to
make life pleasant under an Eastern sky.
The road from Morar lies under the guns of the Great

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 91

Fort. The people I met on the road seemed haughty and
self-reliant. The women, who wore petticoats of Man-
chester or other cotton, not the intricate but graceful gar-
ment of Bengal, looked up bravely, if not saucily, and in
very few cases hid their faces, as a Bengalee woman with
the least pretension to respectability always does on the
approach of a stranger. Women or men, however, young
or old, they impressed one with a pleasant sense of dignity.
The Mahratta boy is proud of his horse, and is in fact a
bom soldier.

Approaching Lushkur " City" the scene varied at every
turn. The fine road became narrow and crooked, and
branched ofif in all manner of directions in a series of
curious curves, conuected by equally crooked bridges,
along the sides of miniature quarries or ravines, alive with
peopla Every road or street was lined with shops and
crowded with workers, whose laughter and talk never ceased.
Here and there the scene was varied by a temple with its
many worshippers. This was the old bazaar, a labyrinth of
huts, such as a mole or an Esquimaux might burrow in,
only beneath a sun which makes life bright and cheerful.
The same road led to the new bazaar, and then to
Scindia's grounds, where many servants (who, in my case,
steadfastly refused baksheesh) were ready to point out
what was to be seen, and to do so most obligingly. I did not
care to see the inhabited palace, about which there was
sure to be some natural difficulty incident to Indian life.
The horse on which Scindia escaped from the mutineers
might, I was told, be seen there ; but not much more. The
new palace, however, and the older ones, unused, in the
Fort above, were quite sufficient for the object I had in
view, and for the work of the cooler parts of two days.

Approaching nearer to the Great Fort, one perceived in
it still more the appearance of a huge beast of prey, with
jutting peaks and deep indentations which might pass for
natural curves, and dwarf foliage not unlike shaggy hair.
Ascending on elephant back, by a narrow, rugged, and

■>

92 ENGLISH RULE AND

unpleasant ciu-ved path, 600 yards long, and with a gi*ii-
dient at times of as much as one in five, might under
ordinary circumstances be the reverse of pleasant, especially
if the elephant insisted, as elephants will insist, upon
walking on the very edge of a path which in the grey
morning seems like the border of chaos. "A slip?" — but
elephants never slip, people say; and at all events there was
soon before the eye a panorama the beauty of w-hich drove
all other thoughts away. In the far distance were the
Jhansi hills, dimly defined, but forming a fine background
to a picture which the sun was now tinting wath the first
streaks of day — the territory, no one is likely to forget,
of the once indomitable Ranee, now held in the name
of Queen Victoria. Beneath was Scindia's city, awaking
to daily life. Far and near, here in cultivated beauty,
there in wild waste, and as if untouched by the hand of
man since the creation of the world, was one vast ex-
panse of foliage, dense as a forest, varied with every
imaginable colour, and relieved by lofty trees, and bamboo
huts and red tiles, and by the signs of a busy human life
which is truly teeming in the immediate neighbourhood of
Gwalior. Above, on strange sentry places, were men of
gallant regiments, whose colours bore the records of many
days of mortal struggle. Every fresh curve brought to view
a fresh sentry, till at last, having passed through five forti-
fied gateways, the path opened on the plateau, where a
man might halt, and feel thankful that friends and not
enemies had been above him during the ascent.

The hill has an upper surface a mile and a half long and
three-quarters of a mile wide, and commands every spot
of ground on every side, save one hill 2000 yards distant.
At the end nearest to Lushkur are Scindia's uncared-for
palace and storehouses. Nearer to the other end are the
barracks and storehouses of England; the garrison of four
hundred infantiy and a battery of Eoyal Artillery, eighty
men strong. The proper garrison in war ought not, I w^as
assured, to be less than 11,000 men, and in native hands

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 93

was probably 20,000. Of course we have the cantonment
close at hand; but if we remember that the nominal
British force in all India is only 60,000 men, and the
real force, excluding depdts, much smaller, it will be seen
that the faith of race and destiny must be strong when a
man can look cheerfully upon those gallant little garrisons.
In the centre of the liill there is a strangely-rugged gully
— deep, I suppose, as the base of the hill, and formed of a
series of chasms and quarries, covered in every part with
the thickest of thick foliage. This is the "Happy Valley,"
and I have no doubt it well deserved its name when held
by some of the old conquerors of India. The position must
in those times have been impregnable; the capacity for
storage is practically unlimited, and in addition to several
serviceable wells in the Fort, every rock in the gorge drips
with water. As on the outside, so to this Happy Valley there
is one nigged path; and the two are alike in the fact that
from top to bottom they overhang awful precipices. The
entire valley is filled with images — not fewer than 20,000, 1
was informed. In all manner of leafy recesses, in nooks and
corners, at every turn of every curve, there is a god, with a
slightly broken nose, or a chipped forehead, or a broken
finger or toe — the work of iconoclastic Mussulmans, but in
few cases sufficient really to impair the work of tlie artist.
Enough for the iconoclasts !hat there was no longer a
perfect idol. A similar story in stone exists in a fine Jain
temple in the Fort Elephanta, compared with Gwalior, is
voiceless as to the history of India. How clearly and dis-
tinctly one may read of the happy Hindoo in his Happy
Valley — his impregnable home. Then of some dark time
when the home changed hands, and the cherished idols
were mutilated. Tide after tide of invasion rolled around
Gwalior, till at last we English came as a race bom out of
due time, and garrisoned the fort with five hundred men,
whom Major Gordon now commanded for Queen Victoria.
This in brief terms is the story of the cities of Scindia, and
of his Great Fort of Gwalior.

94 ENGLISH RULE AND

That Jhansi road, too, along which the Eanee, Lucksh-
mee Bye, marched to her death at Lushkiir, has a grim
story. To the Ranee reference will again be made. It
need only be said here that when her husband the Eajah
died in 1853, leaving an adopted heir whom Lord Dal-
housie refused to recognise, her husband's private pro-
perty (horses, jewels, and furniture included) was sold, to
be invested for the family it was said, but in any case
for a mere moiety of its value. When the Mutiny began,
the Eanee cast in her lot with Tantia Topee. On June
4th she besieged the English garrison; on June 8th she
massacred it, sparing neither young nor old, male or female.
In December Sir Hugh Eose, with the Bombay column,
arrived at Indore. In January 1858 he began the opera-
tions which were to relieve Saugor, capture Jhansi, and
secure the great road by Calpee. Jhansi was invested,
Tantia Topee defeated, Jhansi taken by storm, and no
quarter given by the maddened soldiery. For three days
the streets, the palace, and the private houses ran blood ;
only not, it is said, the blood of women or children. The
Eanee and Tantia fled, first to the Fort, then from the city.
They made a stand, and were defeated in a fierce battle.
They stood again at Lushkur, whither Sir Hugh Eose pur-
sued them, first, however, reminding his men at Calpee, in
words of the nature of those which have made ordinary
men heroes, that they had already marched icxx) miles,
forced passes, and trampled down every enemy that had
appeared. Near to where Scindia's new palace now stands
the last of the Eanee's battles was fought, and she fell like
a heroine, on a spot yet pointed out by the people with
unmistakable pride. It is a story known all India through.

Of Scindia's military organisation I was told that it is
formed on the plan of that by which the Prussians check-
mated and finally defeated the first Napoleon. That is, that
while Scindia is bound by treaty to maintain only 1 0,000 men
in arms, he could in an emergency bring six times as many
men into the field. He is, I should say, a fine soldier. He

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 95

rode into Morar on the occasion on which I saw him at the
head of about a hundred splendid horsemen. When he was
about to leave the Eesidency and had put his foot into
the stirrup, a hundred other feet were put into stirrups at
the same moment. The next moment they were away like
the wind ; or like what they were — Mahrattas. Now and
then we caught a glimpse of them among the trees, but as
a gleam of light merely. I expressed a wish to see the
camp, but the Maharajah hesitated, and I saw that it would
be improper to repeat the evidently unwelcome request. Yet
Scindia appeared to me a gentleman as well as a chief and
a soldier. Intending to refer to the scenes of the Mutiny
as a whole, I tried to forget those scenes in relation to
this beautiful country. Thinking of the rich tints on the
foliage, of the busy workers, and the lively roads, how
pleasant it would have been to escape a word of the horrors
of war ! But the facts will come, here as everjrwhere, jour-
ney as one may on the blood-stained soil of India.

I desire especially here to guard myself against being
supposed to advocate the giving up of the Great Fort at
Gwalior to Scindia. It would be simply absurd in a civilian
to give an opinion on the subject. The importance of the
Fort from a strategical point of view, and the fact that the
men of the Gwalior force fell away in 1857, might again
represent questions of life or death some day. We hold
the Fort, at best, by no other right than the law of self-
preservation ; but that, for aught I know, may in this case
be the paramount law. I should not like to say more, in
view of what any year may bring forth. At the same time,
I wish we held Gwalior by a better title.

CHAPTER IX.

HINDOO AND MUSSULMAN FEUDS — EXECUTION OF
KOOKAS — THE SANTALS — AGRARIAN RIOTS —
OUTBREAK IN A GAOL — RIOTS IN BOMBAY.

From the very nature of the Mohammedan and Hindoo
creeds, there is a standing feud between the Mohammedan
and Hindoo races. Not merely are the festivals of each an
offence to the other, a case which might be provided for,
but the peculiarities of the creeds run into the necessary
acts of everyday life. To the Hindoo the cow is a sacred
animal — the " mother and milk-giver of the family," while
the Mohammedans not merely kill cows, but, in the spirit
of their image-breaking forefathers, insist upon doing so
publicly, and sometimes in the very street. This is beyond
measure distressing to the Hindoos; while Englishmen,
partial to beef, and scornful of the idea that a cow is sacred,
too often take the side of those from whom the oflfence
cometli. Nor is it in the mere killing of the cow publicly
that the Mohammedan butchers transgress ; they too often
are dreadfully cruel in what they do ; and from one cause
or another the grievance never ceases. Englishmen say,
" But how absurd." Well, it is so ; quite as absurd in-
deed as some of our Orange and Catholic feuds; but at
least the Hindoo's faith involves the sacrifice of his interest
He could sell his cows for slaughter, and often refuses.
Herein surely is some title to respect.

In the middle of 1 870 several Mohammedan cow butchers
were murdered in the Punjab, under more than ordinarily
suspicious circumstances, from the fact that the crimes
were almost simultaneously committed in different parts of

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 97

the country, and appeared to be induced by a new Sikh
sect known as the Kookas, pre-eminently defenders of the
cow. Several of the Kookas were summarily executed, and
an impression was created that the roots of the uprisings
went deeper than merely the defence of the sacred cow.
On the 30th August, a native judge of the Small Cause
Court at Lahore gave judgment against a Kooka, a gold-
smith. The man waited till the court closed. Then he met
the judge, who was on his way home, and kiUed him. The
man was tried and executed, and the sentence was made
more terrible by the executioner being chosen from the
Mehter (of the lowest, sweeper,) caste, whose touch is pol-
lution.

While the disquietude from these causes was increasing,
an Englishman, Mr Bull, secretary to the municipality of
Lahore, was murdered by a Mohammedan fakeer, who said
as he struck, " Your watch is over, your raj is gone." These
two facts were put together as showing a concerted plot of
Sikhs and Mussulmans — a by no means improbable union,
considered simply by the light of history, but exceedingly
improbable when it was remembered that the Kooka out-
breaks were primarily against the Mohammedans, among
whom this fakeer was a fanatic. None of the conditions of
the proposed union of Dost Mohammed and Eunjeet Singh
existed, and I never saw any reason to believe that the
presumed union was not a mere fancy. Nearly at the same
time there was a strange panic among the Europeans at
Allahabad, who believed that they were about to witness
another mutiny. The Wahabee trials also, in the case of
Ameeroodeen and others, were proceeding at Malda ; and a
few weeks later Sir Henry Durand was thrown from the
back of an elephant and killed on the Punjab frontier.
The fact that Sir Henry was a soldier of high reputation,
and that the accident, as we shall see, was of an altogether
unusual character, assisted to create that feeling of alarm
which had been growing on different hands. Was it a plot
to rid the Punjab of its military head in view of an uprising ?

G

98 ENGLISH RULE AND

The evidence went to show that the calamity was an acci-
dent ; but this was not seen at the time.

In June or the beginning of July 1871, a Mohammedan
butcher at Amritsur wantonly threw a bone into a Hindoo
well There was an instantaneous rising and some loss of
life ; and the spirit of Hindoo revenge spread rapidly to
neariy all the chief stations in the Punjab. The wildest
proposals were made and applauded. A Hindoo vernacular
paper begged the Government to stop all slaughter of cows.
" Such outrages on cows," it said, " we can no longer bear."
A little later a Mohammedan alleged that a Hindoo had
sold him a mango fruit fiUed with pigs' bristles. On
examination it was found that the Mohammedan had put
the bristles there himself, and he was sentenced to a
month's imprisonment.

A number of exactly similar facts show clearly and
indisputably that what the Government had to contend
against was not a union of Hindoo Sikhs and Mussulmans,
not in fact a political impulse at all, but a deadly religious
feud of the two races.

About the middle of November judgment was given in
the case of a murder of butchers, committed nearly six
months previously by Kookas at Amritsur. For some
time there had seemed no hope of bringing the murderers
to justice ; but at last a man, under sentence of death for
another crime, offered to lay the whole circumstances
bare if his life were spared. The Government reluctantly
accepted the offer ; and it was then foimd that the conspira-
tors, ten in number, after two attempts to conmiit the
murder had been foiled by the murderers missing their
way to the butchers' quarters, succeeded in their at-
tempt on a dark night in June. The butchers were in
several cases caught in their sleep. Four of them were
murdered and three wounded. One of the murderers
escaped. The first informer and another were accepted
as evidence. Four were executed, and two transported.
What came of the tenth has somehow escaped me. The

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 99

Punjab was in this unsettled and really dangerous state in
1870-71; and Englishmen, unable to see below the surface
of native life, were free to give full play to their imagina-
tion. This should be remembered in view of a still more
startling proceeding.

In January 1872 there was a deed done which made
the ears of nearly all who heard of it to tingle. On the
1 6th January tidings arrived in Calcutta to the effect that
an attack had been made on what was known as the
Malod Fort, in the small native state of Kotla, in the
neighbourhood of Loodiana, and 235 miles from Delhi,
where Lord Napier of Magdala was in camp with a splen-
did force of 16,000 men of all arms. Nothing more absurd
ever was known in the history of rebellion. The one idea
in the minds of the "rebels" (numbering perhaps 300,
including women) was that at the MaJod Fort, owned by a
chief not favourable to the Kookas, arms might be seized ;
but to what purpose the arms, if seized, were to be applied,
seemed a problem. The wildness of the attempt was
abundantly shown. Eam Singh, cliief and prophet (Gooroo)
of the Kooka sect, had warned the Government that some
design was on foot. Lord Napier was at hand with a force
powerful enough to march through India. And finally the
rebels — who had tried to fasten with cords, instead of killing
the people they attacked — after being driven away from the
fort, went rambling about the fields, without an aim or a
leader, till they were hunted down by the men of the
neighbouring chiefs, Puttiala and Nubha, and by the police.
The remnant of these "desperate fanatics," in many cases
wounded, were led away in a body to prison. The attack
on the fort was made on the i Sth January, and was repulsed,
with the loss of about three men killed and wounded on the
side of the defenders, and about six on that of the assailants.
On the 1 6th January all was at an end. Bam Singh, and
others, unconcerned in the outbreak, were quietly appre-
hended at their homes. Another body of Kookas, who
had taken arms, hastened to disperse. A force from Lord

loo ENGLISH RULE AND

Napier's camp at Delhi was stopped on its march, and
ordered to return to camp. These are the bare leading
facts of the Kooka outbreak in January 1872. That there
waA no fear of the prisoners being rescued, or of the riot
spreading, everything testified.

On hearing of the attack, Mr Cowan, deputy-commis-
sioner at Loodiana, went at once, with the district super-
intendent of police and the district surgeon, to the scene
of the disturbances. On the i6th he telegraphed to the
Punjab Government for permission to summarily execute
four prisoners — Mr Cowan not himself having power to
take life. Mr Forsyth, commissioner, at Umballa, who
possessed power of life or death, wrote to Mr Cowan,
directing him to send the prisoners to Shirpore — Mr For-
syth afterwards said he added " for trial." Mr Cowan said
that the letter contained no such words as " for trial ;" the
letter itself was lost. On the 17th, before the answer of
the Punjab Government arrived, Mr Cowan had, without
any semblance of trial, begun at Maleir Kotla, to blow
forty-nine prisoners from the cannon's mouth; and the
execution was carried out to the bitter end. One man had
been cut down in advance. Fifty in all were killed. In
the midst of this carnage, the details of which were heart-
rending, a letter firom Mr Forsyth arrived, directing pro-
cedure according to law. The executions, however, were
continued. On the i8th Mr Forsyth wrote his full and
unqualified approval of what Mr Cowan had done, and
also approved of some like acts of the Kotla ofiQcials.

The Indian Government, however, took a diflferent view
of the proceedings. After a long investigation, a masterly
minute, which recapitulated the facts of the case with
judicial exactness, declared Mr Cowan dismissed &om the
service, and Mr Forsyth removed from the conunissioner-
ship of Umballa, and incapacitated from again exercising
jurisdiction where human life might be in question. The
order was made public on May 9th, 1872, after the death
of Lord Mayo, by the temporary Government of Lord

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. loi

Napier and Ettrick, but the decision had, I believe, been
come to previously. At the same time the order fully
admitted Mr Cowan's previous good services, and in particu-
lar his humane care for the people in a time of great distress.
Mr Cowan's case remains as it was. Mr Forsyth was soon
afterwards sent by Lord Northbrook on an important
embassy, and was knighted — to my view a political erix)r
of the first magnitude.

Early in the same year a disturbance which threatened
to have disastrous results broke out among the Santals.
The causes of discontent had been simmering for many
years, and for a period of about six years had been met
by a Santal ryots* association — a remarkable step for the
uncultured race which supplies the unclothed coolies of Cal-
cutta, The mountaineers held a meeting to discuss their
wrongs, and to complain to some person or persons possess-
ing the power to redress those wrongs. A second meeting
was held two years later, and two more meetings of " repre-
sentatives" a year later still. The whole proceedings
indicated great patience on the part of the poor people.
At the end of 1871 a final meeting was held, and the
language of some of the leaders was so indignant that the
men were imprisoned. The complaints were not in any
sense political, but purely social It was asserted that fair
and just measures taken to protect both landlords and
tenants, after the outbreak of 1858, had been systematically
evaded by the former; that the Bengalee landlords, assisted
by an iniquitous race of Mahajuns (money-lenders), who
charged an appalling rate of interest for money which the
owners of the land virtually compelled the tenants to
borrow, had made the lot of the people worse than slavery.
They alleged also, amid much else, that the landlords in
addition to just rent levied unjust fines, and that a tenant
who appealed to the law-courts was inevitably defeated, by
cross-examinations in a language he did not understand,
and often before the trial was entrapped into signing
some deed which invalidated his case. In May 1872

I02 ENGLISH RULE AND

a " Eegulation " was published in the Gazette of India,
defining the rights and duties of the Santals. It was
decreed :

First, that no money-lender should be pennitted to take
interest at a higher rate than two per cent, per month, in
spite of any agreement to the contrary, or to take compound
interest arising from any intermediate account The total
interest on any loan or debt was never to exceed a fourth
of the original sum, if the period were not for more than one
year, and the interest was not under any circumstances to
exceed the principal, as it often had in very considerable
amounts. Large powers were placed in the hands of the
lieutenant governor for the settlement of land, for inquiry into
landed rights, for the record of rights, for the demarcation of
land, etc. An attempt was also made to let bygones be by-
gones as far as the village headmen were concerned. Then —
and most important — any ryot who either himself, or through
persons from whom he inherited, could show that he had
held fields for a period of twelve years, was deemed to have
occupancy right in such fields. Any ryot also who held
fields by an equitable claim at the end of December 1858,
and afterwards lost them, might claim to be reinstated;
and any ryot who had exchanged fields in the same village
had his occupancy right legalised. In fact, this remarkable
decision gave to the settlement ofiBcers power to make a
complete revolution in the afiairs of the poor Santals.

This Regulation was one of the good things of Lord
Napier's government, but it is not difficult to recognise in
it the bolder hand of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal; and
if Sir George Campbell had done nothing more for India,
this alone would have entitled him to the gratitude of at
least the poor. I do not know that the tenants were alto-
gether right, and I am sure the landlords were not all
tyrants in league with unjust Mahajuns; but that there
were great wrongs no one can doubt, and to meet those
wrongs this trenchant order was issued. We shall see
more of the Santals later.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 103

A year or so after the final outburst of wrath among the
Santals, the equanimity of Bengal was upset and the Go-
vernment alarmed by tidings of an agrarian rising in
the district of Patna. The magistrate of Serajgunge, Mr
Nolan, in reporting on the riots, said that while the root of
them undoubtedly lay in the enhancement of rents, the law
itself was not faultless, since it allowed a landlord to in-
crease his rents, even when reasonably high, if he could
show that higher sums were obtained for similar faims in
the neighbourhood. These riots were very little heard of in
England, but they were characterised by pillage and loss of
life, and in the end assumed so serious an aspect that the
Governor General (Lord Northbrook) called upon Sir George
Campbell for explanations. Sir George replied :

" As regards the specific questions asked by the GJovemment of
India, the ryots have not generally shown a disposition to refuse all
rents, but, on the contrary, generally oflFer rents which the zemindars
consider inadequate, and have in many cases deposited these proffered
rents in court. Our officers seem to think that, as might have been
expected, while the zemindars ask too much, the ryots offer too little.
The combinations to resist the payment of all rents are merely
attempts to bring the zemindars to terms by keeping them out of all
rents till they settle the question in dispute."

This paragraph may perhaps lead the reader to suspect
that there is a landlord's as well as a tenant's side of these
disputes, and also that the tenants are not in all cases quite
so helpless as some people suppose. The sympathies of
many English ofl&cers almost invariably go with the poorer
side, and I know that in the ca^e of the Santal disputes, as
also in the income tax appeals in different parts of India,
missionaries interfered with very marked effect on the side
of at least the poor Christians. I think, indeed, that it
will not be overstating the case if I express a belief that
part at least, not of any new-bom sense of security against
oppression (for that the rudest races have when the limits
of endurance have been reached), but of rights within the
law, have their origin in the teachings and influence of the

104 ENGLISH RULE AND

missionaries. At the same time, I do not wish to lead any
one to suppose that the law should be strained any more
in favour of the poor than in that of the rich ; and I do
not think it can be done so without danger.

An outbreak in Bareilly gaol in September 1871 afibrds
an example of a race and creed outbreak, resting, as was be-
lieved, on a strange union of the highest caste Hindoos and
the most fanatical Mohammedans. It may not be known
to every reader that the Brahmin wears suspended, in a long
loop falling over one shoulder, a thin common-looking
thread, which is the badge of his high caste — of a nobility
to which princes may bow. The superintendent of Bareilly
gaol was led to believe that, by virtue of this thread, high-
caste prisoners secured unauthorised privileges, including
immunity from punishment, no warder caring to inform
against a Brahmin ; which probably was the fact. Relying,
therefore, on a prison rule which authorised in certain cases
the taking away of prisoners* clothing, Dr Eades removed
the threads, the direst injury short of death that could be
inflicted on a Brahmin. The rage of the Brahmins was
extreme, and a number of Mohammedan prisoners fanned
the flame to white heat.

At length an outbreak was determined upon. Means
were found to cut off rivets and remove a door, and about
eleven o'clock on the night of September 6th (a very dark
night), forty-seven prisoners rushed into the yard, knock-
ing down sentries, and making their way to where some
portions of looms had been stored. Armed with these, they
attacked the watchmen and guard ; how desperately may be
judged from the fact that thirty-seven of the prisoners were
wounded, and twenty-one of the number with clubs, wliile
only sixteen were disabled by gunshot wounds. A stern
inquiry followed and resulted in an equally stern decision on
the part of the Lieutenant Governor of the North Western
Provinces, Sir William Muir. Dr Eades was removed from
his post, and was informed that he had done a double
wrong, first to the individual in taking away his thread.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 105

and secondly to the empire in forgetting that the principle
upon wliich British power in India rests is religious tolera-
tion. Certainly if any one had ventured to do on a larger
scale wliat Dr Eades (no doubt with the best intention)
did in Bareilly gaol, there had been another mutiny in
India.

One other outbreak may be worth the reader's attention
as illustrative of causes of disquietude within our frontiers.
Early in 1874 it was known in both official and unofficial
life that the Mohammedans of Bombay and the regions
generally where Gujeratee is spoken had become greatly
excited by the publication in that language of Washington
Irving's " Life of Mohammed," construed into an attack on
the Prophet. The publisher was a Parsee, and no more
seemed needed to direct upon the whole Parsee community
the vengeance of the Mussulman fanatics. On the 13th
February the explosion came. The houses of the Parsees
were sacked, the property destroyed, and the people cruelly
abused. For fully two hours in the middle of the day the
rioters worked their will without any police interference.
Elegant houses were wrecked to desolation, and life de-
stroyed, while some Englishmen, it was said, reproached the
Parsees with having caused the disturbance. For several
days the riots continued, the Parsees, now, at times leading,
the Government apparently at its wits* end. A number
of Arabs who landed from the sea were supposed for the
moment to have come by invitation. The Mussulman
Mohurrum festival, too, was beginning. Altogether there
was reason to fear the worst. At last troops arrived, and
the rioters rapidly disappeared. Here was another powder
magazine which a spark had ignited, and not for the first
time. If the area had been extended, and sparks carried
to other magazines, the loss of life might have been great,
even though no political crisis involving a race mutiny had
resulted. It will be observed that in none of the cases
here referred to was there a political motive as against
the Indian Government. In none, perhaps, was there

io6 NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

serious political danger. In all there was serious danger
to individufids, and in all also there were issues which
required to be met with firm but calm and forbearing
statesmanship.

I think the reader will conclude also, after considering
these facts, that there is such a thing as " Native Opinion
in India." I do not mean by native opinion the great
power of a united popular will, kindred to that which
I think is much more clearly seen in Manchester and
Birmingham than in London. I do mean the power of
great bodies of people to perceive a fact from some com-
mon stand-ground, and to make that fact the basis of
united action. That is, I am asking the reader to view
Indian life by the light of facts which came under my own
observation and by the light of history before English rule
in India began, as well as by that of the hundred and twenty
years since Plassey. It is a history of action resting on
opinion. The application of these facts, in their broad and
general importance, wiU pertain more appropriately to a
later chapter. Here, however, independent of anything
the Government can do, or avoid doing, are elements both
of disquietude and danger.

CHAPTER X.

THE NORTH WESTERN PROVINCES AND THE PUNJAB —
SIR HENRY DURAND, SIR WILLIAM MUIR, AND SIR
JOHN STRACHEY.

The three names at the head of this chapter represent not
merely three distinct orders of men wielding almost irre-
sponsible power, but also three distinct kinds of govern-
ment in India. In the cold season of 1870-71, Sir Henry
Durand and Sir William Muir went away on tour through
their respective provinces, the North Western Provinces in
the case of Sir William Muir, the Punjab in that of Sir
Henry Durand. The latter had a very short time previously
been appointed to the lieutenant governorship, and his
career had been so marked by honest speech, as well as by
meritorious action, that his appointment was generally
spoken of as an honour at once to an able soldier and
administrator, and to the Governor General who had ap-
pointed him. I never saw Sir Henry Durand, but he had
contributed to the journal I edited (a fact made public
at his death), and while on this tour he sent me two
articles entitled, " The Life of a Soldier of Adventure of
the Old Tima" It was the story of Colonel Grardiner, an
American of Scotch and Irish parentage, who, after long
joumeyings in the East, from i8i3toi8i9, at length made
his way through Persia to Cabul, and secured the friend-
ship of certain able foreign ofl&cers, Allard and Avitabile
among others, who so materially influenced the fate of
Dost Mohammed and Kunjeet Singh. By the aid of these
men Gardiner was made chief of artillery to the Maharajah
of Cashmere, and in Cashmere he very recently lived.

io8 ENGLISH RULE AND

The daring adventures of this really remarkable soldier
seemed to have an especial charm for Sir Henry Durand;
and if the opportunities for work had not suddenly been cut
off, there can hardly be a doubt that the literary treasures of
the Punjab would, in such hands, have afforded material
for throwing light upon some other strange careers ; such,
for instance, as that of Avitabile, of whom old Anglo-
Indians with experience of the North West never tire of
talking, but of whom also the mass of even well-read Eng-
lishmen know nothing.^

On Saturday evening, the last day of 1870, Sir Henry
was entering Tonk, a town near to Dera Ismail Khan, on
the extreme frontier of the Punjab. His, of course,
was the loftiest elephant and the tallest howdah of the
procession, and the ruler of Tonk sat by his side. On
approaching the gateway the elephant was driven more
rapidly, and the howdah and its occupants were thrown to
the ground. The seat had been higher than the gateway.
The chief escaped. The lieutenant governor was lifted
from the ground insensible. On Sunday morning he re-
covered consciousness. On Sunday evening he was no
more. He was buried at Dera Ismail Khan, and was
mourned by a large number of people as men mourn for a
friend. Many years previously he and another warrior of
a different stamp, Dr Duff, had made their first voyage to
India together, and whether it was from the influence of
that voyage or not I cannot say, but Sir Henry Durand
was noted throughout his life as a God-fearing man of the
grave and not ostentatious kind. From the time when in
1839 he carried the powder-bag to the Cabul gate at Ghuz-
nee, scraping the hose with his finger-nail to ignite the
powder, till he left the Governor General's Council for the
lieutenant governorship of the Punjab, his name had stood
exceptionally high. As Eesident in the court of Scindia,
he had learned the intricacies of the Mahratta politics. As
Resident at Indore in 1857, he committed the serious error

* Appendix IV.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 109

of deeming Holkar disloyal — an error which led to great
loss of life. Yet throughout all, and in spite of a pen
and tongue which knew no compromise of principle, his
ability and coTirage were his passport to confidence. The
life of India, however, does not admit of long seasons of
mourning, and in a few days the subject seemed to pass
away. Mr Davis, chief commissioner of Oude, succeeded
to the Punjab, and General Barlow to Oude. The sea of
passing events went on as before.

Sir William Muir was unlike Sir Henry Durand in much,
but like him in a sense of duty, and in a belief, not a con-
venient figment, that God really did make of one blood all
the nations of men, Hindoo as well as Englishman. Sir
Henry would probably, apart from military affairs, have
been noted chiefly for his stem justice to the people of
India. Su* William Muir was noted as their helper, their
counsellor, and friend. In season and out of season, in
kind and conciliatory speeches, he attacked the people of
the North Western Provinces on such all-important sub-
jects as education, marriage expenses, and infanticide ; and
his words remain like dew in a parched land. Infanticide,
some people suppose, has gone, like Suttee and Thuggee ;
but the supposition is an error. As late as 1868 the secre-
tary to the Government of the North Western Provinces
said: " Investigation affords sufficient evidence that since
the inquiry made in 1856, there has been no perceptible
change in the barbarous tendencies towards infanticide
which stigmatise certain branches of the Eajpoot family.
The crime indeed is shown to be so prevalent in some
villages as to leave no doubt that wholesale murder is per-
petrated of every female born into the world." Mr Hobart,
joint-magistrate of Bustee, wrote: "I believe that the
returns of certainly 180 of the 216 villages visited are as
correct, with regard to numbers and age, as they possibly
can be. . . . Nearly all spoke of the crime as one of
the past I regret that I cannot think the crime obsolete
or even diminished. It is practised with greater secrecy

I lo ENGLISH RULE AND

perhaps, but it is certainly most extensively practised.
. . . The Soorujbunses of the Bharut Dwaj clan are the
highest caste of Eajpoots in the district, and are the most
addicted to infanticide. The Baboos of Bhudawur Kalan
live in ten villages, in seven of which I found 104 boys
and one girl, who, luckily for herseK, was born and bred at
the house of her mother's family, and who has not been
pennitted to come to her father's house. Their other
villages are said to contain two girls. They admit that for
ten years there has been but one girl married in all those
villages. Next come the Baboos of Nagpore, who live in
twenty-seven villages. In fifteen of the villages no mar-
riage of a girl has taken place for a decade. In their three
remaining villages there would appear to be three girls.
The Baboos of Asogpoor preserve their old reputation.
They have twenty boys and no girl, and no girl has ever
been married from among them, or known in their village."
To this dreadful state of things Sir William Muir
directed almost imremitting attention. In a beautiful
spirit he implored the people to reduce their ruinous mar-
riage expenses, to educate their children, and to lead
upright lives. How beneficent the influence was, and how
great the power for good or evil of au Indian governor is,
may be judged from the fact that the Government of Bom-
bay about the same time actually laid a graduated tax on
marriages in lieu of one previously proposed on native feasts.
Of course a tax on marriages, dividing the marriages into
classes, graduating according to the tax paid, could not fail
to bring revenue to the Government in exactly the propor-
tion that it brought ruin to the people. At a time when
the Brahmists were nobly striving to promote widow
marriages, and men like Sir William Muir were labouring
to induce a curtailment of expenses, this absurd and bane-
ful proposal was put forth. I believe it was given up,
but I am not quite sura To Sir William Muir's minute
on the outbreak in Bareilly gaol reference has previously
been made. To his administration generally a long

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 1 1 1

chapter might easily be devoted. Among other parting
words to his officers when leaving India in 1874, he said :
" He trusted his young friends especially would excuse
him if he urged upon them to cultivate sympathy with the
natives of the coimtry, to understand and feel with them
in their trials, their joys, their griefs, and to understand
and bear with them even in their prejudices, and it might
be their superstitions. Indeed this was essential if we
were to fulfil the golden law of doing to others as we would
that they should do to us. The natives of India were, he
well knew, susceptible of kind and grateful feelings to-
wards those who thus felt with and loved them; and,
indeed, if we were not to make this our object, he did not
see what good our coming to the country was at all.
He trusted his young friends would bear with him in
these observations, the result of a long and careful study
of the people and our treatment of them." In all this
the reader wiU see a man who had framed his policy on
models which only obtain respect where the aim is pure
and single. I am writing from public records purely ; I
never saw Sir William Muir.

The next lieutenant governor was Sir John Strachey,
now Finance Minister. Of his statesmanship there are
various opinions. Some speak of him as one of the ablest
men in India ; some say that in ability and strength of
character he overtops all his fellows ; some maintain that
he has been the evil genius of the Indian Government
in his time. That he has acquired a character for
cynicism is undoubted, but there are instances in which
it has been a courageous cynicism, raising him above
the meanness of pandering to sentiments popular with
bodies of men wielding great influence. If, for in-
stance, any religious society invited Sir John Strachey
to take the chair at one of its meetings, it would do so
with the full consciousness that his sympathies were not
with the objects of the meeting, and that he had no wish
to be differently considered. I have heard people say,

1 12 ENGLISH RULE AND

" He has always some plot in his head," and I have heard
others ask in reply, "Well, what plot can you give us as
as instance?" a question I never heard answered with the
" instance." That he was the moving spirit in much that
was done by Lord Mayo's Grovemment, every one knows
who knows aught of that Government; and there certainly
are unmistakable instances in which, when the work was
done, he stood aside — cjrnically it may be — and cared
nothing for the credit or applause. When he succeeded
Sir Eichard Temple as Commissioner of the Central Pro-
vinces, his eulogy of Sir Eichard's administration was as
hearty and generous as it was simple and manly. It was
either the testimony of a man who knew that if he lived
he would have no need to borrow any one's laurels, or of a
man who despised the laurels so long as he possessed the
power.

In the Council Chamber he had the air of a man who
was content to be unobserved, but who knew that he was
not unobserved, especially when, with his head inclined to
one shoulder, he glanced sidewise, and with a comical
expression of face, at some speaker of more than ordinary
fervour, and appeared by his look to say, " Don't you know
now that all this is sad fustian?" When Lord Mayo was
murdered. Sir John Strachey became Governor General,
pending the arrival of Lord Napier and Ettrick, and people
knew that a strong hand held the helm. When he suc-
ceeded Sir William Muir in 1874, one of his first acts was
to visit the " Famine Districts " — the parts of his province
adjoining Bengcd — and after a personal inquiry to close
the famine works. He could, he said, meet every require-
ment of the province by ordinary means. This step was
taken at the very time that Sir Eichard Temple was pre-
paring for a second year's famine, and when England had
insisted that no lives should be lost How far it was the
right step cannot easily be determined; but it shows the
will of the man. That he cares much for the people of
the country I would scarcely suppose. If they asked for

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 1 1 3

education, I think he would give the education, as he
would give justice in a law-court, simply because it was
the proper course in sound administration, not from any
other motive. In extreme danger he would be one of a
few men in India who could not be overlooked. In ordi-
nary times he is a man who may be of real service to
India and England, especially if India can learn to trust
liim, and to comprehend his proud if not perverse indivi-
duality ; and if he, on his part, can convince people that
he has some abiding principle, and does not act merely
with regard to the exigency of the hour. That is, he is one
of the foremost of administrators. He might, however, if
he pleased, be also a notable statesman. An administrator
may attain higli place without rising above an exact per-
formance of passing duties. Sir John Strachey aims higher.
He would impress his character on his time. To achieve
the higher success he only lacks — if he does lack — sym-
pathy. I see no proof that he esteems that essential ele-
ment of high statesmanship at its true value.

Of the North Western Provinces generally it may be
said that they were formed into a separate presidency by
an Act of 1833, during the government of Lord William
Bentinck, and that their first ruler was Sir Charles Met-
calfe, who, a little later, as provisional Governor General,
did India the great service of setting the press free. The
Punjab was annexed in 1849, after the series of fierce
battles which ended with Gujerat; a war in reality — that is,
a standing state of war, with only intervals of peace — con-
tinued from the time of Lord Auckland's fatal expedition
to Cabul till the Maharajah Duleep Singh sat for the last
time on the throne of the Jion of Lahore, when the King-
dom of the Five Eivers became part of the dominions
of England. Our enemies for so many years, the men of
the Punjab became our firm allies, and assisted to save
the empire in 1857. In this annexation at any rate Lord
Dalhousie will be more than justified by history.

There is a fact, or at least a substantial belief, which

II

114 P^A TIVE OPINION IN INDIA,

may properly be mentioned here with reference to the
Sikhs. It is said that after the Mutiny a very little encour-
agement by England would have gone far to induce a pro-
fession of Christianity on the part of the Sikh troops, if not
of the bulk of the Sikh race, and that the encouragement was
withheld. The only idea of the Sikhs was that the Cross
was in the ascendant; but the same idea had often before
been the only one in cases where whole nations had been
brought under the influence of at least Christian teaching.
What might have been the result if a professedly Chris-
tian nation had been established in the Punjab ? It were
to little purpose to say that such a conversion would have
been worthless in a religious sense, for many "conver-
sions" at present are of no greater value to man or more
reverential to the Almighty. The political motive in
favour of the encouragement being given would have been
the increase of strength that would have accrued to a
professedly Christian government The motives against it
were probably of a mixed character. Some men would,
rightly and honourably, stand on the principle that mass
conversions belong to days which can never return; but
there must have been others who would perceive that an
army of professedly Christian Sikhs would mean an entirely
new relation of rulers and ruled. That would be the low
and ignoble reason for the refusal ; but whatever the reason,
we escaped the experiment in these times of a renewal of
an old-world practice. That the East India Company
(which, after all, was England) was wise in discountenancing
proselytism, I take to be a clear historical fact ; but there was
no merit in what simply indicated that trade, and not
empire, was our object in India. Mention of the higher
object of doing good to the people may be set aside as
not merely a fallacy, but an absurdity. No such motive
contributed anything worth speaking of to the warp or
woof of the policy of the East India Company.

CHAPTER XL

CALCUTTA — ENGLISH AND NATIVE LIFE — HINDOO
READINGS — HOSPITALS AND ASYLUMS— SEWAGE
AND WATER WORKS— THE MINT — SURVEY DEPART-
MENT — CHEENEE BAZAAR — COOLIE EMIGRATION
— AN EX-KING.

It was on the low land — ^the swamps— of Lower Bengal
that the English in India first laid deeply the foundations
of Empire. Madras and Bombay were powerful factories,
with a great array of mighty deeds in arms, but imperial
power sprung from Fort William. The dark year 1756,
the year of the Black Hole, was nearly at an end when
Clive reached the Hooghly. He had not made his way
from the south without losses ; but already his name was
one to conjure by in war; and when he advanced from
Hooghly to Fort William the history of Calcutta as the
capital of India began. Suraj-ud-Dowlah and a great force
had retreated to Moorshedabad; the French, against whom
war had been declared, held Chandemagore. Before the
end of June 1757 Clive had captured Chandemagore and
won Plassey. The site of the Black Hole has now to be
sought for, with special information, on open ground. Fort
William is its own mark, and one of the first objects that
attracts the attention of a stranger in Calcutta. It has no
grand elevation like Gwalior, or even like Agra or Delhi ;
but the low-lying ramparts, and the heavy guns, pointing
at once to city and river, and commanding a great plain on
the side nearest the sea, tells its story of present power
and resolution.

On the river the visitor will find vessels of all nations ;

1 16 ENGLISH RULE AND

ashore, in truth, a " city of palaces " — flat-topped palaces,
with broad verandahs, and imposing carriage drives, and
durwans (porters) at the gates, to prevent any one passing
inward till sahib has received the warning of the durwan*s
bell. Missionary, soldier, civil oflBcer, merchant, or what
not, sahib has his durwan and his bell. If you call at six
or seven o'clock in the morning you will find sahib and
mem sahib (his wife) at their little breakfast (chotee hazree)
— a cup of tea with a biscuit, or some ** trifle " — sahib and
mem sahib in comfortably light attire, enjoying the blessed
cool air. Punkah-men wiU be behind, waving their great
hand-fans; or on the verandah, pulling those larger fans
which take in the width of the room. Mohammedan
table servants, and Hindoo bedroom servants, and low-
caste sweepers, will be busy within, while the maUies
(gardeners) adorn the rooms with freshly-cut and well-
selected flowers. If you call at nine you wiU find sahib
and mem sahib at their large breakfast (their burree hazree)
of mutton, fowl, fried potatoes, curry of various dishes, beer,
wines — everything the reader can conceive as belonging to
a very " big breakfast." Meanwhile sahib and mem sahib,
to the never-ceasing wonder of their servants, have pro-
bably had poojah (prayers). Then sahib will go to his
daily duties, part of which he may have done at his little
breakfast, and mem sahib will look to her he-dressmaker,
or her bazaar book, or the pedlars ("wallahs") who are
waiting to fight her a glorious battle of barter, even to the
half of a farthing — a fight which mem sahib often enjoys as
a foretaste of heaven.

K you seek sahib at his ofl&ce a little after mid-day, he
will ask you to tiffen (which means lunch), and you may
dine on meat and potatoes, with beer, salads, and so on.
In the evening, while the sun is still above the horizon, you
will find sahib and mem sahib driving leisurely in front
of the beautiful Eden Gardens, and listening to the music
of a regimental band. As the sun begins to approach
the regions of night, sahib and mem sahib drive home, to

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 17

the supreme event of the day — to Dinner. Then it is that
you should see sahib and mem sahib — presiding over endless
courses, endless bottles of champagne and beer — mem
sahib in fashionable attire, sahib in his swallow-tailed
coat ; a scene, one regrets to think, such as the Queen never
saw, and cannot well imagine.

Outside you will find the Hindoo and Mohammedan on
their way to the bazaar, or to their bamboo huts, to smoke
and tell stories ; or to their theatres, or to hear some read-
ing; or to fly kites, and fight them in the air. I was pre-
sent at one reading of the Eamayana, provided by a public-
spirited landowner for the late Bishop Milman. The
reading was given a few miles from Calcutta, in a Free
Library, founded and maintained by the landowner. The
books were on all manner of subjects, from Newton's
" Principia " to the latest novel. I asked the son of the
proprietor which class of books — ^the religious, the histori-
cal, or the scientific — was most sought after. His eyes
twinkled with real fun as he replied: " None of them — the
novels." The reader of the Eamayana was a fat, and I
hope it is not disrespectful to say, a rather ugly man, with a
ludicrous sense of dignity ; but his gesture and intonation
were perfect, and charming even to one who did not know
the language. He was listened to with lively interest by
a great crowd of all classes of persons, admitted without
any payment, and whose alternate laughter and sighs marked
the stages in the story of the joys and sorrows of the great
Rama. The reader or reciter, I was told, earned £1200 a
year. Readings by less notable artists are a feature of
everyday life.

Not far from the European residences are the native
hospitals and asylums, representing human misery at its
worst, and human kindness at its noblest. I visited every
hospital in Calcutta. The Lock Hospital — with its long
lines of open sheds, and its child-mothers of suflFering
infants — was inexpressibly painful to look into, yet very
cheering in the relief it afforded to fearful suffering. The

1 1 8 ENGLISH RULE AND

laws 80 much opposed in England with reference to mis-
guided women are in force here, and in spite of a thousand
difficulties, had, I was told, done immense good. Tlie
Native Lunatic Asylum, under the same superintendence —
Dr Payne's — stands in the midst of beautifully laid-out
grounds, cultured and tended by an army of lunatic garden-
ers. A system of irrigation, magnificent flower-beds, well-
kept walks, artists in painting and sculpture, builders, and
workers in cloth and jute, were among the features of this
refuge for persons suffering from the most hopeless of all
maladies, and, next to those of the Lock Hospital, the most
distressing.

On the opposite side of the river, at Howrah, is the
European (one may say, the Sailors') Hospital. On veran-
dahs, or rooms, open to the river, I found forty-three sailors
and railway men, as comfortable as sick men can be under
such a sun. Li the cemetery I sought out a young sailor's
grave, and engaged a poor native gardener to plant some
flowers upon it. I am relating the facts, because they are
significant. The work was done, and when I finaUy left
Calcutta I again saw the man, and telling him that we
should never meet again, I gave him a small sum of money.
" / look to it, sahib," he said ; and he did. Two years later
I found that the flowers had been as carefully trimmed and
watered as if I had been there all the time. I wonder if I
should have found equally honourable conduct in a like
case in England.

The water works and drainage of Calcutta are among the
most important achievements of any land. The engineer,
Mr Clarke, found along the sides of the houses open drains
and no side paths ; a great difficulty as to where the sewage
could be taken to, and a supreme question of all whether
the Hindoos could, without breaking caste, drink water
that had come through infidel pipes. He had zealous help,
Native and European, and the difficulties were removed.
The water works, with a system of filters, to make the
Granges water pure, were of diemselves an immense under-

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 119

taking. For the sewage a piece of land, a considerable
distance from the city, and called the Salt Water Lake (a
swamp of large extent), was taken up. The sewage,
carried through close drains this long distance, was at differ-
ent stages poured into vast quantities of water, and mixed
therewith by machinery, till at last it appeared at the outlet
at least as clear as the water of the Ganges, and devoid of
smell. It was then left to harden on the lands. This, in a
hot climate, was a real victory, and it became a feature of
daily life. In the same way the open drains — "institutions
of our forefathers," like stage-coaches — were covered in, and
side paths, made. Altogether it was a work of great utility,
accomplished in the face of enormous difficulties.

Near to the Salt Water Lake the municipality had pro-
vided a grand dining-place for birds of prey — one class of
the scavengers of India. Here the carcases of Calcutta's
old horses are thrown out, amid a war-whoop which a Eed
Indian in his best days might have envied. I saw three
or four carcases arrive, amid the mighty rejoicings of the
vultures and birds of many names, which fought like
pfidadins for their places at the feast. The carcases cer-
tainly would not remain to become putrid. What the
birds left by day the jackals would appropriate by night,
and there would be little but bones in the morning. What
a field India affords to the naturalist! A bird of prey
cooUy taking possession of a pretty paroquet, carrying it to
the top of a mahogany tree, and holding it in one claw
while plucking it alive, is a dismal sight, rendered more
dismal by the impassive face of the destroyer, and the
plaintive cries of the victim. A cloud, of myriads upon
myriads of white ants, rising from the ground at eventide,
unwittingly to afford sport and food to a lesser but stiU
numerous cloud of birds, ever increasing in number as the
joyful announcement of the treasure-trove goes abroad, the
mighty swoop of the large birds, and the finer curves of the
smaller ones, are really beautiful There is also the one com-
fort in this case, that a very useful work is being done, for

120 ENGLISH RULE AND

every ant that escapes and falls wingless to the ground is
an element of destruction in an Indian house. In all
nature, indeed, the riches of India can only be conceived
when seen. Some of those riches especially with reference
to vegetation we shall see later ; but no pen can depict the
real fact.

If we pass to the Mint of Calcutta we may find a great
historical institution, with important historical lessons.
We realise the fact that the coinage of India is silver at its
highest, with copper, or bronze, supplemented by cowries
(shells, so many of which go for a small coin) ; that in this
land of once fabled wealth it has been found impossible to
maintain a gold currency. The mint, when I saw it, had a
European head in Colonel Hyde, but next tohimwasaHindoo.
Nearly all the labour was done cleverly and expertly by
native hands — a fact which will be partly understood when
it is added that, in one day during the Bengal famine, a
million copper coins were struck. Much might be said of
the way in which the mint supplies the Government trea-
sure-chests throughout immense districts; of its relation,
past and present, to all the operations, military and com-
mercial, great and small, of Anglo-Indian history. It is
impossible, too, to look into any one of several rooms — for
instance, the engraving room — without perceiving that the
mint is educational A number of the bright-eyed nimble-
fingered boys of Bengal are there, as busy as bees, etching
and drawing with a cheerfulness as of play, and an
intentness as of the labour of matured workmen.

Another marvellously suggestive scene is presented in
the great Survey Department, presided over by Colonel
Thuillier. I use the term great here in the strict and not
in any conventional sense. It is a mighty department,
engaged in the scientific conquest of all India. My notes
of the surveys might fill a chapter of this book, and still
leave facts of great value untold. First, the department
undertakes a Trigonometrical Survey of all India ; secondly,
a Topograpliical Survey on the trigonometrical basis;

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 2 1

thirdly, a Eevenue Survey. In the first case latitude and
longitude, heights above the sea, etc., are marked ; in the
second, the conformation of the country ; in the last, vil-
lages, parishes, and boundaries. Each department requires
different men and a different equipment, and the operations
extend to the coldest and wettest, the hottest and driest,
the lowest and highest parts of India. Where fever is rank,
or life least secure because of savage populations, there the
officers of the survey department — men delicately nurtured
it may be, and in all cases highly educated — sit down, in
isolation from all European society, to do work to which the
whole world will be indebted, but which only a small part
of the world recognises at its true value. One skilful officer
had charge of the lithographs and photography. Two officers
at the time I saw the department (divided into five parts,
in as many different streets, of Calcutta) had just returned
from the two columns of the Looshai expedition, lamenting
as a calamity, a blank in their surveys, from the fact that
the two columns never had come together. During the
year there had been surveyed for the revenue more than
6000 miles in Lower Bengal, nearly 6000 in the Central
IVovinces, and lesser extents in the Punjab, the North
Western Provinces, and Oude.

Turn from this to the view of native life presented in
the " Cheenee (China) Bazaar." The bazaar is not in one
sense so interesting as some in India, because not so charac-
teristic of any special race, but it is indeed a marvel of life
and industry. The moment you enter the first long narrow
street you are surrounded by a race of the best and worst
touters in the whole world. If you close your carriage door
they politely open it and laugh defiantly in your face as
they ask, " Does sahib want " this or that, in an endless
string of unceasing chatter. The dignified Hindoo shop-
man sits at his door smoking or gossiping. The stolid
Chinaman does likewise, and perhaps convinces you or
mem sahib in a very dignified way that he has " only one
price '* — a very parade of defiant stolidity. Beyond ques-

122 ENGLISH RULE AND

tion he is kiug of the bazaar that bears his name, and in
which, esche\ring all unnecessary talk, he goes on to com-
fort if not to foitune. Go where you may, indeed, John
Chinaman is the same. Even in gaol he makes it worth
people's while to give him light work, which he does weU.
On the deck of a Peninsular and Oriental steamer he heaves
the lead without looking to right or left, though the pret-
tiest of ladies and the most playful of children may be
laughing, dancing, playing at his side. In the bazaar he
is master or nothing — a master shoemaker generally. You
are cheated in the Cheenee Bazaar at every turn. Some-
times you are vexed ; yet you return ; this time, however,
you say, "only to see the variety of life," yet you are cheated
again. Handicraft from all parts of India, Japan ware and
Indian shawls made in England, books of all kinds, good
and bad, in all languages, articles of which the seller can
only guess the use, and often guesses ludicrously. You are
recommended to buy the Bible as " a very good book, sahib,"
and Paine's " Age of Reason " also as a very good book,
sahib. The bookseller is of the Universal Church. You
may perceive also, I think, even here, that the Bengalee is
the brain of India ; the Parsee is hardly native to India in
the sense of influencing its thoughts and views. The mer-
chant asks his confidential clerk of this bazaar as of others,
" What are the rumours to-day ? " and he attaches import-
ance to the reports.

A short drive further down the river would bring you to
the West Indian coolie emigration dep6ts. I paid par-
ticular attention to these places for several reasons, and I
think I may say I examined the subject from all points of
view. Some very serious questions are involved. Are the
coolies taken away to virtual slavery ? Are the provisions
for the voyage carelessly made ? Do the people come back
to India better or worse, if they come back at all ? I
noticed chiefly the depdts of Trinidad and Jamaica, and the
former especially. The agent, Mr Mitchell, an able man,
was sent from the colony to Calcutta to provide labour for

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 123

Trinidad on certain conditions, for which the Indian Govern-
ment stipulates. First, the utmost care must be taken
not to engage any coolie of whose freedom of will there is
the slightest doubt. For this some stringent provisions
have been made. Brought to Calcutta, the coolies must be
lodged in comfortable quarters, provided with medicine and
surgeons, food, and tanks for bathing. The ship also must
be rigorously inspected. If the orders are adhered to, it
is hard to see in what respect a coolie emigrant dififers from
an emigrant from England. If the orders are disobeyed,
it can only be by running several very hazardous gaunt-
lets, which are guarded by magistrates, doctors, and inspec-
tors, with the very reliable security behind all, that if a
man dies on the voyage the colony loses his value.

The dep6ts I visited were formed, in very pretty rural
places, of several long lines of sheds for beds, living, and
cooking. I saw a large party ready to embark, timid,
restless, doubtful, half afraid to speak. I saw groups from
other parties newly returned and waiting for transit to their
up-country homes, different beings in every respect ; many
bringing home considerable wealth in money and orna-
ments ; all possessed of some wealth. Men and women alike
(for the women are protected in their earnings), they had
the independent air of people who had seen the world.
Many who had gone out poor had risen to be planters and
store-keepers on a large scale. They had grown too into
the knowledge and the possession of rights. Many, of
course, had died : many more had suffered; but I thought I
could see a clear gain in the proper application of the prin-
ciple of coolie emigration. There is an improper applica-
tion. Wherever such a principle is left in the hands of
men to develop, there will be loop-holes for cruelty and
oppression ; and rigorous checks are needed The first ex-
perience of the sea also must be dreadful to an inland
people. But so would it be to the people who went out to
New England in the " Mayflower." I may be wrong, but
from all I saw, I came to the conclusion that coolie emigra-

124 ENGLISH RULE AND

tion, though but a subsidiary, is an important factor in the
material education of India in these times.

Close to these dep6ts stands that great institution of
India, the domain of the ex-King of Oude. When the
dominions of the king were transferred to the British
Government, he was granted from the revenues of his king-
dom a large pension, and was allowed to make for himself a
little walled town on the banks of the Hooghly. The " Resi-
dent " at his court in 1 874 was Colonel Mowbray Thomp-
son, who kindly went with me over the little " kingdom."
Without much trouble, it was quite possible to see how the
ex-king could spend his allowance of £10,000 a month, and
an additional sum which he receives as rent from a bazaar
outside, and still run into debt. He had 6000 subjects who
would have fought at his orders ; but only fifty, I believe,
armed; a court with all the gradations of rank, as in
Oude; two married wives; thirty-nine unmarried wives,
called Mahuls — bearers of children — and a hundred others,
called Begums, who were presumed, it was said, not to
bear children. These, however, are of the mysteries of
the ex-king*8 court. He had living a family of thirty-one
sons and twenty-five daughters. He had three or four
palaces, in which he spent his days and nights alternately,
or at choice ; and amid and around all was a menagerie
said to be among the finest in the world. The reader
may judge. There were 20,000 birds, beasts, and snakes —
some in cages, some walking, some flying — in all manner of
creeks and crevices and leafy bowers, around a tank or
lake 300 feet long by 240 wide, and alive with every kind
of fish that money could procure or art tempt to live on the
banks of the Hooghly; 18,000 choice pigeons (the king's
especial favourites, or dividing that honour with the
snakes); pelicans and ostriches; swans, geese, and birds of
many names, intermingled with dromedaries, ibis, sheep,
and goats of a vast number of breeds. All these, amid the
fine foliage and highly-cidtivated grounds, formed a remark-
able and beautiful scene.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 125

Then there were the snakes, the ordinary kinds possess-
ing to themselves a mountain, in shape like a dome, about
thirty feet high, and perforated from top to bottom with
holes, the snake retreats; the extraordinary ones — the
cobras — ^kept safely indoors, to be produced when required.
The possessors of the mountain, fed with frogs and other
delicacies, prowled about, curled themselves up, basked in
the sun, or retreated into the shade at will, subject only, like
their master, to the law that they must keep within certain
boimds, in their case represented by a small trench of
water. Tlie cobras, brought out and handled by a short
grim man (liereditary to snakes), coidd hardly, perhaps, be
matched for size and the appearance of deadly power. The
servants gathered eagerly around to see the grim man wait
his turn, and then seize upon cobra after cobra, as in fierce
play. This is one of the king's great amusements. Some
years ago his Majesty had a sore and touching trial.
Several thousands of snakes on their way to his little
kingdom were seized as dangerous by order of the British
Government. Then the ex-king paints, writes songs which
are sung by nautch-girls all over India ; has dancing-girls
and musicians for each passing day ; and, when the doors
of his kingdom are closed at night, is beyond all dispute a
monarch. His grounds employed three hundred gardeners.
His menagerie cost for food £scx) a month. What his
ladies — wives, mahuls, begums, and others — cost, it would
be highly improper even to surmise. I have ventured to
tell this story as illustrative of a phase of Anglo-Indian
and Indian history, with which subsequent chapters will be
concerned.

A drive back along the river's bank, past Fort William,
would bring us to the shops and hotels around Government
House. A Calcutta hotel and a Calcutta lodging-house are
pretty much alike, so far as sleeping-rooms are concerned ;
the rooms, like cells, ranged on both sides oJP long corridors,
in the case of the hotel, and of shorter ones in that of the
lodging-house. One notable Calcutta hotel, however, is a

1 26 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

perfect compendium of everything to eat, drink, wear, read,
or otherwise enjoy. The "table" is supplied from the
Company's own farm; below stairs, in rooms from the main
shop or store, are iced drinks and lunches ready all the
day through. Here Englishmen meet with friends from all
parts of India; the fresh arrival, the homeward-bound man,
the hale and hearty, and the weak and infirm. For an
hour or so before breakfast the corridors, the news-room,
and the billiard-room are crowded. Breakfast and dinner
are laid out on a grand scale. Indeed, if a man is
well, and can laugh and talk, and brook a fair share of
rubbish in conversation, and has time to throw away, he
may enjoy an Indian hotel If he is sick, and at the same
time is bound to work, he will be likely to pray God to
take away all the attractions of table and amusements, and
give him, in their place, a humble cottage and simple fare,
and the kind hearts of the untravelled simple people at
home. To a person broken down in health, the sights and
sounds of an Indian hotel are inexpressibly melancholy.
In this, however, human life is much the same in all lands.
Of the burning ghat, where perhaps a dozen bodies, of
old and young, may be seen at one time slowly consuming
on the funeral pyre, a ghastly story might be told. To the
life and trade on the river I shall refer later. Of the
cordial feeling, the earnest work, the oftentimes curious
drift of opinion (soured perhaps by disappointment, or
sweetened by success), one might write at great length.
The Government Offices even might convey a story not
without significance. Much, however, that these names
may indicate, we shall see in another form.

CHAPTER XII.

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S COUNCIL— FINANCE AND

LAW REFORM.

The Imperial Council of India, when in Calcutta, sits at
Government House, with a drawing-room for Council
Chamber, and dead statesmen — Marquis Wellesley, Eyre
Coote, and others — looking down upon the councillors from
the silent canvas. When I saw Lord Mayo in 1870 he sat
at the middle of a long table, with men like Lord Napier
of Magdala, Major General Norman, Sir James Stephen
(not yet Sir James), Sir Eichard Temple, and Sir John
Strachey, around him — military and legal members; Foreign
Secretary, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, commercial
members, members for the provinces, and others.

The " sitting of the Council " was correctly designated.
Sir Kichard Temple, with a whole community to confront
on the income tax, and Mr Stephen, with new principles
of law to expound, were bound to speak sitting. It was
not always so. People remembered and told of a time
when men rose to their feet, and raised their hands, as Fox
raised his to denounce Pitt, and pointed their fingers, as
Pitt pointed his in reply. The Council, it is said, was fast
becoming " popular," when a heaven-born genius suggested
the idea of sitting, and embodied the idea in what became
known as "a bill to extinguish Sir Barnes Peacock." From
that time all was decorum. In the first Coimcil held in
Calcutta in the cold season of 1870, the members met
silently, as in a meeting of Quakers, looking at each other
and at the Viceroy, while the punkahs moved solemnly
overhead, and a few birds, flitting backward and forward,

128 ENGLISH RULE AND

bore witness, in that dull solemn room, for life and
freedom.

About two hundred persons were present when Sir
Eichard Temple's "Exposition," as it was called, of Fin-
ance was read; and among them was Mr Seward, then
on his way through India — a briglit-eyed white-haired
genial old man, still suffering from the felon blow inflicted
on him when President Lincoln was murdered. He had in
his day listened to Mr Sumner and Mr Wendell Phillips
in America. He had now the privilege of listening to Sir
Eichard Temple in India.

The main feature of the Budget was what was called the
Decentralisation of Finance. That is, the Imperial Govern-
ment had determined, under certain restrictions, to hand
over to the Provincial Governments duties represented by
the terms gaols, registration, police, education, medical ser-
vices, printing, roads, miscellaneous public improvements,
and civil buildings ; and to make to each government an
assignment of money for the purpose. The local govern-
ments were also to find for themselves the best modes of
taxation suited to each particular province. The idea of
separating the local and general accounts was an old one,
which Colonel Chesney had enunciated, among many
more masterly thoughts which have not been associated
with his name. To Lord Mayo simply belongs the honour of
giving the idea practical eflect, and to Sir Eichard Temple
must in common fairness be ascribed many of tlie carefully
arranged details. The Governor General stated the policy
in these terms :

" The local governments are deeply interested in the
welfare of the people confided to their care; and, not
knowing the requirements of other parts of the country or
of the empire as a whole, they are liable, in their anxiety
for administrative progress, to allow too little weight to
fiscal considerations. On the other hand, the Supreme
Government, as responsible for the general financial safety,
is obliged to reject many demands in themselves deserving

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 1 29

of encouragement, and is not always able to distribute
satisfactorily the resources actually available."

This statement embodies the gist of the scheme, and oif
the grounds on which it rested. The total amount set
apart for the Provincial Governments was £4,688,711, or
about £330,8cx) less than the expenditure for the same
purposes in some previous years, on the data of which
the assignments were made to Oude, the Central Provinces,
Burma, Bengal, the North Western Provinces, the Punjab,
Madras, and Bombay. I omit the figures as not likely to
have any definite meaning to the general reader. The
principle involved that the government of each province
was better able to adjust its own taxes and expenditure
than the Imperial Government was to make that adjust-
ment, requires no interpreter. Of the army Major General
Norman, after referring to certain reductions and some un-
expected charges, said : " I am decidedly of opinion that
we have now reduced our European force to the very low-
est safe strength" Lord Napier of Magdala had previously
made a similar statement, with some additional serious and
pregnant words.

For the principle of the income tax Sir Eichard Temple

fought hard, and defied his critics of all orders and names.

They had, he said, written and spoken to a great if not an

unwarrantable extent, but all that they had advanced was

defeated by one fact. The Government had sent out a

circular to the Local Governments, requesting them to

return lists of all known cases of oppression under the

income tax, and — would the Council believe it ? — the only

afl&rmative answer was from the Goveinment of Bengal,

and with that only thirteen cases had been returned. Lord

Mayo turned curiously in his chair and laughed — a low

merry laugh, almost, it now seems, like that of a boy at

play — while his finance minister was, in this way, defending

the policy of a tax the doom of which was fixed. In the end

the tax was reduced from 3| to 1 per cent., and the income

on which it was levied was raised in amount In that

I

130 ENGLISH RULE AND

form it was passed for one year " for investigation." There
was no doubt, however, that Lord Mayo intended to entirely
blot the tax out, as it was blotted out by Lord Northbrook.
Long before the end of the year well authenticated in-
stances of terrible oppression by income tax collectors were
made public. Mr Inglis, senior member of the Board of
Eevenue, North Western Provinces, said:

" It might be true that only a certain number of persons paid the
tax, but a large number more were subjected to the most vexations
oppression, inquisition, and extortion, . . . and many had to
pay to keep their names out of the lists.*' And again : " I beUeve it
is no exaggeration to say that for every man who pays income tax to
the Government, twenty pay to get off, .' . . that is, that the
natives of India paid last year upwards of two milhons sterling as
income tax to the Government, and two millions more as bribes.
Everjrwhere through the country the people are being demoralised
by the tax, everywhere the trading classes are beginning to keep two
sets of books, one showing the real transactions, the other containing
a carefully garbled account to be shown to the income tax assessors.''

Sir Eichard Temple and the gentlemen of his depart-
ment were startled. The thirteen cases of oppression
under the income tax were held up by the newspapers to
pubUc reprobation and derision. The Gk)vernment of the
Provinces was then appealed to against Mr Inglis; but
Sir William Muir's reply was a calm confirmation rather
than a disavowal, and his opinion was also supported by a
host of instances, some of wliicli, by the strength of the
language in which they were couched, went further even
than the statements of Mr Inglis. The question had been
removed altogether from the domain of argument to that of
examples, and the examples abounded. Poor men, it was
shown, had been compelled to walk many miles to appeal
against an unjust rendering of their income, and then had
found their efforts thwarted by some man whom they had
refused to bribe. Facts upon facts, clear, irresistible,
damning to the income tax policy, were made public. To
Sir Bichard Temple's honour, it must be said, however
(and I write here from knowledge), that though he fought

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 131

bitterly for his policy, and accepted all tlie opprobrium,
which of right lie only ought to have shared, when the
decision had been come to he cheerfully accepted the
inevitable, and did not carry the recollection of his personal
opponents (as opponents) a step further.

Lord Mayo had then, as he said, put an end to deficits.
He had husbanded liis resources like a miser. His over-
sight of public works never had ceased; and now, when
he had looked for a deficit, he had in 1869-70 (Sir Richard
Temple admitted, however, from a series of accidents) a
surplus of £i8o,6cx), and in 1 87071 an estimated surplus
of £1,569,315. This was a triumph, but with a drawback.
The increase was chiefly in opium revenue, which had been
estimated at not quite seven millions sterling, and had
produced close upon eight. Instead of £97, los. per chest,
as estimated, the price, owing chiefly to a failure of the crop
in China, had been £112, 3s. per chest; besides which
there had been 38,740 chests of Malwa opium, instead of
only 33,600 as estimated. Surplus or deficit therefore
depended on opium, which might any year fail. In mili-
tary expenditure there had been slight reductions owing
to exceptional causes, but with the ominous words of Lord
Napier and Sir Henry Norman on record, no one would
talk of permanent reductions in the army. The main issue,
however, was in the fact, that a failure of opium might
overturn everything. What remained? Customs, Excise
— everything in fact known as taxation — seemed marked
as inelastic. That they are so I do not believe. I feel
assured that men like Sir Mahdava Eao, whose great deeds
in Travancore I shall show hereafter, and Sir Dinkur Eao,
to whose masterly administration reference has already
been made, could instruct us how, at the same time, to
make taxes lighter and revenue greater. We refuse the
services of such men. And at present the revenue is
essentially a fixed quantity.

Taking one year with another, at this date the revenue
may be stated at, say £50,000,000, and the expenditui'e at

132 ENGLISH RULE AND

a little less. The great items in the receipts are Land
Kevenud (from twenty to twenty-one millions sterling),
Opium (seven millions), and Salt (close upon six millions).
Excise, Customs, Stamps, Post OflBice, etc., represent smaller
but important sums, ranging downward from about three
millions in the case of the customs. On the other side
there is interest on debt (say five millions), law and justice
and police (together say from five to six millions), and finally
(omitting other amounts, including a large sum for public
works) the army, £i6,cxx),ooo; an item which, as we have
seen, the commander-in-chief and the militaiy member of
Council decided must be accepted without question, unless
some one could at less cost maintain the same efficient army.
One of the special facts of the Budget was the loss on
exchange and the position in the money-market of the
India BUls. The Secretary of State had drawn on India
for £9,cxx),ocx), on which £600,000 had been lost by
exchange ; about a half more than the estimate, the rupee
selling at only is. lojd. instead of is. ii^d. as expected;
and at last the bills having become unsaleable, the specie
itself had been shipped to England, at a loss on the ship-
ment of £620,000, amounting to as much as twopence on
the rupee; the total shipment was reduced to £571,812.
In all, India does not pay less yearly to England in various
ways than fifteen or sixteen millions sterling for home
charges. The cash balances of the Indian Government —
that is, the amounts in the various treasure chests in
Calcutta and the Provinces as working capital, " cash on
hand" — was stated at £16,000,000.

Reading the story of these Budgets calmly and dis-
passionately, is it possible to doubt, not merely that the
finance of India is not cheering, for on that all are agreed,
but that its evils rest on known if not removable causes?
Sir George Campbell in the debate on the East Indian
Loan Bill (30th July 1877) said:

'' It was a great eource of weakness and a great evil that the amount
of remittances to this country from India sbotdd be continually in-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 133

creasing. It was said tliat the debt due to England from India was
for value received. To some extent that was true ; to some extent it
was not. In time of trouble the amount of debt would become a
great source of weakness. The great debt of France had become a
conservative element, while the debt incurred by India to England
was a great danger. He wished also to object to the system of bor-
rowing from great capitalists. Instead of having, as formerly, loans
open in the villages to all the natives, the Qovemment now issued
advertisements in the great towns for loans from great capitalists.
The result of abandoning the system of open loans had been that
India had to pay a higher rate of interest for the money, and that the
faith of the natives in the British Government as the depository of
their savings had been diminished. The total Rupee Debt was some
£71,000,000, of which the natives held 25 per cent, only, while 75
per cent, was held by Europeans. But taking the whole debt of
India, including the English and the guaranteed railway debt, the
natives did not hold more than one-tenth in all."

A volume might be written on the subject of Indian
finance without perhaps conveying the full meaning of
these few words. I question, however, whether India has
anything like the value for her outlay that even Sir George
Campbell would admit. I do not of course refer to money
investments, but to those of service. Peace is maintained,
it is true, and the country governed. India also escapes
some important charges, as for instance for a fleet But
it is doubtful whether those charges would not be for her
benefit Her money is to a large extent spent in England.
Not merely every retiring pension, but a part of almost every
salary during active service, as well as dui'ing furlough, is
sent out of India. The life-blood of commerce vanishes
like a dream. The English officer — chief and centre of a
district — never intends to become a district landowner. He
cultivates no acres, provides employment for no tenantry
or labourers. He in fact rather cramps the energy, by
dwarfing the position, of resident landowners. When he
leaves India Ids connection with it is generally one of money
paid in the one case and received in the other. If we
intend to retain this great empire, the difficulties of its
finance must be dealt with at the roots. We must assist

134 ENGLISH RULE AND

India to become rich in commerce, in resident enterprising
men. To put an end to deficits was something. To
separate the local and general accounts was something
more. But while the soundness of the revenue rests on
the crop of a baneful drug, the Government of India are
merely living from hand to mouth, and in spite of surpluses
can have no healthy finance.^

The other subject at the head of this chapter is in more
than one sense vaster, as it certainly is more difficult to
deal with in a brief space, than even that of finance. In
1870 the labours of four eminent men, assisted by a man
less known, but who has since become their successor, was
fast assuming an aspect which seemed to indicate that
the " reform, consolidation, and codification " of the law of
India had reached a great, if not a final, stage. This work
which Sir Barnes Peacock had begun. Sir Henry Maine
had continued from an independent stand-ground, and Sir
James Stephen was now dealing with in a new way, and on
a principle as essentially his own. For the true parentage
of Indian law reform we should have to go back to one
whose genius infused health into whatever he touched — to
Lord Macaulay. How he chafed and frowned when brought
face to face with the absurdities of Indian law, will be told
for ages. He attracted to the subject the attention of
Englishmen skilled in the law. He made the subject
popular and intelligible. Yet when he left India the sub-
ject slept for more than twenty years, till it was revived
after the Mutiny by Sir Barnes Peacock.

Putting aside, however, as of necessity, the work of Lord
Macaulay and Sir Barnes Peacock, I shall ask the reader
to notice some features of the labour of Sir Henry Maine,
as a necessary introduction to what I personally knew of
that of Sir James Stephen. Sir Henry, then Mr Maine,
began his work of law reform in 1862, and he did not leave
it till 1 869. Seven long trying years. Among the measures
framed, and in most cases carried, were bills to deal with —

^ Appendix V.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 135

" Works of Public Utility by Private Compauies, Articles of War
(native), Breaches of Trust, a number of bills for the Control of High
Courts in the Presidency and other Towns, Municipal Assessment, the
Law of Divorce, Treaties, Imprisonment of Convicts, Civil Justice in
various parts. Stamp Duties, Oude Claims, Bank Receipts, bill relating
to Foreigners, Coolie Emigration, French Bank Bill, Tolls and Port
Dues, Customs, a Whipping Bill (a measure warmly opposed by Sir
Chai'les Trevelyan and others). Official Trustees, Military Canton-
ments, Municipal Bills, Small Cause Courts, Magistrates' Courts, Eegis-
tration of Assurances, Re-marriage of Native Converts, Oaths of
Justice, etc., Akbari Acts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Jurisdiction, Civil
Code, Ceded Lands, etc.. Government Forests, Administration of
Estates, the Succession and Inheritance of Parsees, Partnership, Indian
Companies, Pleaders* Bill, Summary Proceedings on Bills of Exchange,
Recorders* Bill, on the Manufacture and Sale of Arms, Assam Tea
Company, Execution of Process, Religious Endowments, Mortgagees'
and Trustees* Property, Removal of Prisoners, Horse-racing, Public
Gkunbling, Escaped Convicts, Presidency Gaols, Murderous Outrages,
Madras Salt, Oude Rent, European Vagrancy, Contagious Diseases,
Principal Sadr Amins and Munsifs, Oude Talookdars, Native Mar-
riages not Christian, Punjab Tenancy, Lock Hospitals, and others."

This bare list of measures seems necessary to convey
even an approximately correct view of the process of
Indian law reform. Some of the measures here referred
to are of the nature of mere routine. Some involved
immense labour, patience, and resolution. The Native
Marriage Bill was a measure which set not merely all
Native India aflame, but also aroused the missionaries to
extraordinary exertions, still spoken of as things of yester-
day in Calcutta. Two attempts to settle the question had
failed The issue was simply whether a man or woman
converted to Christianity, and in consequence deserted by
husband or wife, should be allowed to re-marry. It seemed
a simple issue, but in fact while the missionaries diflfered
and argued with respect to it, the Hindoos and Moham-
medans were roused to the very depths of their commu-
nities in opposition to what, in fact, was an attempt to
prevent them from making a change of faith a crime. In
1865 Mr Maine defined the bill as "an interposition of
secular power on purely moral grounds" as to marriage.

136

ENGLISH RULE AND

leaving the clergy or ministers to re-marry native converts
or otherwise according to their views and the views of
their churches. In 1866 Mr Maine re-argued the whole
question in a remarkably fine speech, and from every
imaginable point of view, of history and existing fact of
race and creed. The bill, somewhat altered, was then
passed.

The Law of Divorce, the Native (not Christian) Marriage
Bill, the Oude Claims, referred to in another chapter, and
several other subjects, were marked by equal difficulty.
The variety of these measures indicates that the work of
Indian legal reform had advanced another great stage, and
that distinct enactments were giving place to a complete
reconstruction of the law. It must not be understood that
Native India looked upon these efforts with apathy, or with-
out alarm. In truth, every step (taken it must be remem-
bered without the test of a Parliamentary opposition) was
viewed with jealousy and at times with terror.

Mr Stephen defined his aim as one — (1.) of consolida-
tion ; (2.) of codification ; (3.) of new acts ; and in the
end it was seen that he had to the extent shown in this
table, abridged and simplified the law :

Number and i?.-«..i/.#.-«,,o
S«»ject,fAct. tkX^^.

Number and ȣfS,i?l
Subject 0/ Act. tke^rSS^led

93 of 1870 Coinage repealed,

6

ID of

' X871 Excise, ... 5

a6 „ Prisons,

6

13

„ Customs, ... 7

I of 1871 Cattle Trespass, .

• 3

83

„ Pensions ... 15

3 „ Paper Currency, .

• 5

26

„ Land Improvement, . 10

4 „ Coroners,

4

29

„ Repeal of Obsolete Re-

5 „ Prisoners,

- 7

gulations, . . 53

6 „ Bengal Civil Courts

13

3a

„ Oude Courts Act, . . 10

7 „ Emigration, .

5

8 „ Registration,

4

15 Acts replaced, . . 153

A Eepealing Act also abrogated the whole or parts of 17
acts and 188 regulations. The Punjab Land Eevenue Bill
and the Punjab Laws Bill reduced a mass of regulations,
rules, orders, and unascertained laws, scattered over many
volumes, to two acts of moderate dimensions. Mr Stephen
also introduced a "Land Eevenue, North Western Provinces,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 1 37

Bill" — consolidating forty-one acts and regulations; the
Local Extent Bill — consolidating into sixteen sections,
seventy acts and regulations ; the Mortgage Procedure Bill,
and the Christian Marriage BilL When these were passed
it was said that not more than thirty or forty regulations
would remain unrepealed, and in each case the law on any
particular subject would be contained in a single act.

It may have occurred to the reader as curious, that the
Christian and Native Marriage Bills never seem to have an
end ; and, indeed, they have not — so far in Indian history.
Unforeseen difficulties have arisen from time to time, and
re-opened all the old sores. In the Brahmo Marriage Bill,
for instance, it was found that by an exceptional marriage
ceremony for the Brahmists, Mr Stephen had given the
name solely to the younger body, who alone claimed the
bill, and by inference excluded, as not Brahmist, the elder
body who were content with the Hindoo marriage cere-
monial Of course the bill was at once amended. Codifica-
tion Mr Stephen, in other words, described as the reduction
to express written rules of principles of law which it had
previously been necessary to infer from illustrations by de-
cided cases ; in short, the reduction of text books to the form
of statutes. There were passed by Mr Stephen — the New
Limitation Act, founded on the existing law, but so drawn
up as to dispose of perhaps 1200 or 1500 judicial decisions.
The Evidence Act, of which Mr Stephen said, " I assert that
every principle applicable to the circumstances of British
India which is contained in the 1598 royal 8vo pages of
'Taylor on Evidence,' is contained in the 167 sections of
this bilL" The Indian Contract Act, which was originally
drawn by the Indian Law Commissioners, but was a good deal
remodelled by Mr Stephen. This Act contained 267 sections,
which Mr Stephen did not hesitate to say were the equiva-
lent of many cumbrous volumes of decided cases. The
Code of Criminal Procedure which re-enacted the Code, but
rearranged it in such a manner as to be intelligible, and
cleared up innumerable doubts as to the meaning of the

138 ENGLISH RULE AND

old Code. It also contained several substantial improve-
ments; and, in particular, put on a proper footing the
" European British Subject " question, defined the duty of
troops in suppressing riots, and became a Criminal Courts
Act for the whole of India. In dealing with the penal law,
Mr Stephen caused great excitement by this clause, which,
however, was carried : " Whoever by words, either spoken
or intended to be read, or by signs, or by visible representa-
tion or otherwise, attempts to excite feelings of disaffection
to the Government, established by law in British India,
shall be punished with transportation for life, or for any
term, to whicli fine may be added ; or with imprisonment
for a term which may extend to tliree years, to which fine
may be added."

There can hardly be two opinions as to this clause con-
ferring on Government all but despotic power ; but Native
India has the safeguard that, in times of peace, the clause
could not be put in force for anything short of treason, and
that in time of danger the power would be put in operation,
with or without any such clause. The unpleasant words
were intended to meet some existing facts, which were not
easily met by the existing law, but which, all the same,
were met in reality, as, for instance, in the case of the
Wahabees.

The concluding part of Mr Stephen's work, the enact-
ment of measures more or less of a political character, in-
cluded — An Act to Amend the Penal Code by providing
punishment for Political Offenders ; the Hindoo Wills Act ;
the Criminal Tribes Act, which put under the ban of the
law tribes which heretofore had set the law at defiance ;
the Native Marriage Act, the Oaths Act, Acts for Local
Cesses, Income Tax, Land Acquisition, and others.

It would be both invidious and unjust to compare in
other than general terms the work of Sii* Henry Maine with
that of Sir James Stephen. Each perhaps did that for
which he was best fitted. The latter would never, I think,
have plodded through so many weary years, opening up

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 39

and determining such a vast variety of subjects ; the fonner,
I think, would not have applied the same powerful magnet
to bring the whole into one system. The gift by which
the latter was accomplished was peculiar and masterly ; but
that too was a gi'eat gift which prepared the way. In
neither case was tlie work claimed as perfect. Sir James
Stephen retouched some of Sir Henry Maine's work, as
Sir Henry Maine retouched some of Sir Barnes Peacock's,
and as Mr Stokes may have to retouch some of Sir James
Stephen's. Mr Hobhouse, the late legal member, represents
an interregnum in the massive work, which is really a con-
catenation of many ideas ^vrought out into life, by a few
master hands. Lord Macaulay, with all his genius, could
do little more than throw light into darkness. Sir Barnes
Peacock broke the ground, which he had not time to utilise,
and which Sir Henry Maine did vastly utilise. Then there
came a fresh mind, with loyal support from another fresh
mind (tlie Governor Geneml's), and the Law of India was
brought into the shape in which it will probably remain
long, subject only to the necessary changes indicated by
changing times. I never gathered from Sir James Stephen's
speeches that he claimed more than this for his labour in
India. He found a strange old building, of every possible
order of arcliitecture, unsuited to modem times. He also,
however, found new beams, mfters, windows, and stones —
some in their places, some on the ground — material for a
general " restoration." He took up with a finn hand the
work of former architects, and he remained in India till he
saw the scaffolding taken down, and the old building trans-
formed. I think tliis, as far as it goes, is the simple truth
as to this reform of India Law.

CHAPTER XIII.

VICE-REGAL CEREMONIAL — THE STAR OF INDIA— FOUR
LIEUTENANT GOVERNORS OF BENGAL.

On an afternoon in February 1871, three representative
men were invested by Lord Mayo with the Star of India ;
the Maharajah of Puttiala, a young man, the heir to a long
line of chiefs, in later days distinguished by great loyalty
and services to England; Prince Gholam Mahomed, an
aged man, and very infirm, the last of the race of Hyder
Ali, and the son of Tippoo-Sultan, one of our most redoubt-
able enemies; and Sir William Grey, the retiring Lieu-
tenant Governor of Bengal, spoken of on all hands as one
of the last of the old Bengal civilians. It was a curious
scene to any one who strove, ever so little, to connect the
past with the present time.

The floor of the united throne room and marble hall of
Government House is in the form of the letter T, with the
entrance door at the foot of the letter, and the throne at
where the two arms branch off to right and left. From the
door to the throne there are two lines of fine pillars, and
along the avenue formed by them, and also between two
laughing, talking lines of ladies and gentlemen behind and
between the pillars, the honoured guest of any particular
day at this palace of the Governor General of India, has to
walk (not run) a gauntlet more terrible to some men than
leading a forlorn hope. Those critical eyes of ladies, those
freeborn tongues, which no prince, power, or potentate, by
the mere dignity of his presence, ever yet succeeded in
reducing to silence ! The central figure of the day was the
young Maharajah, who was to be made Knight Grand

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 141

Commander of the Star of India. Prince Gholam Mahomed
and Sir William Grey, who were to become Knights Com-
manders, merely entered quietly and without display. The
Maliarajah of Puttiala, gorgeously attired, was conducted
with great ceremony to the dais, on which sat the Grand
ilaster, the Viceroy. The Mahamjah of Vizianagram, tall,
spirited, affable, and spangled with jewels, sat, or rather
stood, among the distinguished personages of the order, con-
versing gaily with English ladies, and asking old acquaint-
ances to introduce him to persons w^hom he wished to
know — the very picture of genial good-nature. Near to
him was the Mahaiujah of Jeypore (referred to in the
chapter on "Lord Mayo"), short of stature, pale, grave,
thoughtful, and evidently anxious to be as little seen as
possible — a fine chief, whose Eajpoot blood is his least
claim to the honour of Englishmen, and whose schools,
and watchfulness over his people (ruling them, it is said,
like a shepherd), and good fiscal management, the Indian
Government has delighted to honour.

Then there was that aged man, also bedecked with
jewels, the last of the race of Tippoo, tottering at every
step as if a breath would blow him over ; representing in
his own person, not merely a mighty race, but very nearly
the entire history of England in India. Known for a whole
generation as the friend of education, the friend indeed of
the friendless of whatever name, honoured by the Queen of
England, and foremost in all good work of peace, Gholam
Mahomed had memories of very different and very criti-
cal days. Seventy-two years previously, to the very day
(February 27th) his father Tippoo had been defeated at the
battle of Madavelly, which threw open the way to Seringa-
patam. A little later the warrior chief, safe, as he thought,
in his impregnable fortress, was sitting down quietly to his
mid-day meal, when the dread news came that the English
were upon him, putting an end to mid-day and all other
meals for ever. General Baird, long a prisoner in Seringa-
patam, led the forlorn hope. Tippoo died bravely, and

142 ENGLISH RULE AND

was buried next day with military honours, and in the
midst of a grand thunderstorm, the peals of which blended
with 'the roar of the English guns over his grave. The old
family of Mysore was restored to part of the territories
wrested from it, and the family of Tippoo were pensioned
at Vellore, Prince Gholam then a very little child. What
traps and pitfalls he afterwards escaped, what intrigues
he discountenanced, and what a peaceful life he led, have
often been spoken of with wonder. He died a little later.
Of the Maharajah (also since dead) there is little of a
personal nature to tell, save that he was^ eighteen years of
age, the husband of two wives, and the father of a boy then
three years old. He was, however, the son of that Narindar
Singh, who, in the time of the Mutiny had been one of the
best friends of the English, as his father in a like critical
time had been before him. The story is as interesting
as a novel. How Karem Singh gallantly stood by us during
the Sikh war of 1845, and died before his great services
could be acknowledged. How his son Narindar succeeded
at once to liis power and policy, and lived to believe,
rightly or wrongly, that our gratitude had vanished with
our danger. How he then retired, sullenly, if not discon-
tentedly, to his dominions. How the Mutiny came, and all
India looked with suspicion on Narindar Singh. How
he replied to the suspicion by splendid services, heading
Ms troops, guarding several important stations, lending the
Government his money, providing carriage, keeping open
the vital artery of the Grand Trunk road. How rewards
were then gratefully bestowed upon him, with a full sense
of what our debt really was ; and finally, how, a member of
the Imperial Council, with the Star of India on his breast,
and the thanks of England conveyed by Lord Canning in
public durbar, among his treasures, he died in 1862, in the
forty-sixth year of his age and seventeenth of his reign. The
education of the son of the dead Maharajah was considered
a special chai-ge of the Indian Government. He was an
ever-welcome guest at Simla. He had place at the XJm-

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 1 43

balla durbar. He exchanged visits with the Duke of
Edinburgh at Lahore. And now he received the highest
degree of the order of the Star of India. The ceremony
therefore was no mere pageant. The young Maharajah,
heir to a line at once so noble and so friendly to England,
beginning life ; Gholam Mahomed, closing a century of his-
tory ; and English Sir William Grey, closing a long thirty
years of Indian service, formed a fine tableau. Lord Mayo's
last durbar was in January 1872, for the reception of the
young King of Siam, an extraordinarily self-possessed
young gentleman.

The position of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal is an
exceptional one in Indian governorship. Down to the time
of Lord Dalhousie the Governor General was also Governor
of Bengal. Tlie first Lieutenant Governor was Sir Frederick
Halliday; the second was Sir John P. Grant; the third, Sir
Cecil Beadon; the fourth. Sir William Grey. It is an
office which requires greater tact and decision than any
other in the country, if the Lieutenant Governor would at
once avoid obstruction and preserve his independence. In
his own Council he is supreme; in the Imperial Council he is
only a member. In Calcutta, where his power is indisput-
able (unless tlie Governor General exercises a veto, as Lord
Northbrook sternly did), he is still only the little Lord
Sahib. The Governor General is the greater Lord Sahib;
and Government House, Calcutta, though not to be com-
pared for comfort and beauty of situation with the Lieu-
tenant Governor's house at Belvedere, Alipore, is the centre
of greatness in ruling power. The duties of Lieutenant
Governor, therefore, require self-assertion when necessary,
and tact and courtesy always.

In contrasting three rulers of the North Western Pro-
vinces and the Punjab, I did so, as then stated, with a view
to the greater contrast of Sir William Grey, Sir George
Campbell, Sir Eichard Temple, and Mr Eden. When Sir
William Grey left Calcutta, the whole educated native
population deplored the loss. Not perhaps with enthu-

144 ENGLISH RULE AND

siasm, for he was not a man to evoke enthusiasm, but I
believe with sincerity. His gentleness and forbearance,
his considerateness, his justice, and his conscientiousness,
seemed to have found a way to the heart of the people.
He was not a broad man, people said, not broader than an
English Whig, but in his own groove he was reliable
where only justice, or mercy in need, was sought for. I
gathered that he had not been a strong, though he had been
a careful administrator; that he was a dangerous disputant,
with a keen eye for crevices in the armour of his op-
ponents, and that his minutes — the delight of Ms heart
— while pitiless in logic, in insisting that one and one and
one should make three, were often tempered by an after-
thought which smoothed much of the sternness away.
That is, he was a Bengal Wliig of the better kind, with a
view of administration resting on a tolerance of opinions,
and even prejudices, and a great kindness to Native India ;
and Native India has preserved his portrait, as that of a
friend.

His successor was Sir George Campbell, who arrived in
Bengal with a high character for administrative ability.
He had done excellent service in Oude, the Punjab, the
Central Provinces, and elsewhere ; had been the indefatig-
able president of a committee of inquiry into the Orissa
famine; had written a book highly spoken of on the
question of Irish land, and had striven, though unsuccess-
fully, to find a seat in Parliament. His greatest laurels,
however, had been won as President of the Famine Com-
mittee, and he was destined to be confronted by a famine
as threatening a^ that which Sir Cecil Beadon failed to
meet till too late. In the end, after a fierce and laborious
term of office, he. left India with very little popular good-
will, and very little of the goodwill of the English in
Bengal ; although in losing him the people of India lost a
man more capable of serving them, if they and he could have
found a common ground, than, save in a very few instances,
any man they had known in all the century of English

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 145

rule. His views were clear, but his temper was uncom-
promising. He seemed to allow nothing either for native
habits of thought, or for the weakness of his own officials,
and he speedily acquired the character of an abrupt un-
courteous man. His whole term of office was characterised
by contention, not in the sense of wrangling, but of dis-
putation. In the Imperial Council, where his sound views
ought to have had, and indeed had, w^eight, his contentious
tone and persistence did much to destroy the effect that
his perception of facts created.

He developed a system of education for the very poor,
a really honest public-spirited project; but he created
and promulgated it without consulting the feelings of the
landlords, whose support he nevertheless demanded. With
ever so little real conciliation he could have won them to
a man. In the case also of the Pubna riots and the
Santal outbreak, referred to in an earlier chapter, his
course, just in fact, was made by the strength and nature
of his language to assume a form of partisanship, honour-
able perhaps in an individual, but dangerous in a ruler.
He was no partisan, but he forgot that when the sun and
the noith wind contended which should first cause a man
to doff his coat, the sun was victor. Other and far lesser
men than Sir George Campbell had caused the landlords
to doff their coats. The reply to Sir George was an
extra row of buttons. In allowing so little for existing
facts he set at nought, not merely Indian, but also English
history, and he failed.

In striving to give effect to his views of popular educa-
tion (to utilise, by small grants, the old "Guru patshala "
schools), his laudable aim was further marred by an extreme
condemnation of the provision by the State for high-class
education. If rich men wished their sons to be educated, let
them (he said in other words) pay for the education ; which
in one sense was right, although rich men did not of them-
selves provide Oxford and Cambridge, and this was a point
which the Hindoos did not lose. But they had also the

K

146 ENGLISH RULE AND

much stronger point, admitted by the Duke of Argyll
(despatch, May 1870), "that those among whom our
English system of education has struck deepest root,
though generally of the literary and higher castes, can by
no means be described as of the wealthier classes of society."
The public services are now presumed to be open to all,
Native and English alike, and to depreciate, as Sir George
Campbell did, in different ways, this high-class education
was to place Native India out of the race of competition.
To say that such was his aim would be absurd ; but such
was the drift of his language and of his action, and in
this sense he was understood. The tests of the competi-
tion are not merely English, but high-class English, and
in even that young India has, in spite of all tests, ex-
celled.

Then there came a fine opportunity for Sir George
Campbell to express liis views on the whole question of
prisons. An experienced inspector general of the prisons
of Bengal, Dr Mouat, had just retired from the service.
He had spent a lifetime in the work, and had developed a
prison system, which will be referred to later, so efiTective
tliat it had received many encomiums. The death of the
governor of Alipore gaol, an able medical man, led to Sir
George resolving to have no more doctors as governors, and
to determining that the prison system should, even if less
remunerative, be made more punitive. In reality, on the
strength of what could only in comparison be mere general
knowledge, he condenmed the carefully matured system of
a man who, whatever his views might be worth on other
subjects, had made this one subject his own in principle
and detail.

To the famine policy of Sir George Campbell reference
is made in another chapter, and I believe that every-
thing goes to show that his view was the right one. In
fact, the King of Burma has already raised the price of
grain in consequence of the Madras famine. The foregoing
shows but a very few of the contentions of Sir Geoige

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 147

Campbell ; some with officers, some with landlords, some
with the Governor General. But Bengal, at all events,
will by-and-by learn to forgive the mannerism and isolated
temperament (more than temper), for the value of his aims
and of many of his acts. As an opponent he was an open
opponent ; as a friend I should say lie could not be a false
friend. Indefatigable in work, and loyal to good workers,
his failing was to expect too much from men who, though
perhaps worthy and good men, were quite incapable of his
own sustained efforts. That he could be merciful and kind
some facts which I could mention would very amply prove.
That he was more than a mere executive officer every one
knows who knows India. That his governorship repre-
sented a virtual revolution, succeeding that of Sir William
Grey, I tliink the reader will perceive. It was a change
from desk management to root-and-branch administration,
resting on fixed and matured views as to political prin-
ciples underlying action.

Sir Richard Temple succeeded to the lieutenant governor-
ship, with the cordial goodwill of Loixi Northbrook, whose,
rather than Sir George Campbell's, famine officer, or
dictator, he had been. He was in robust health when he
took up the duties which his predecessor in ill health had
let fall. His career as an officer had been one of marked
success ; in particular, as Chief Commissioner of the Central
Provinces, he had shown qualities scarcely expected in
him, for healing the wounds of war by developing and
fostering arts of peace. That he had a powerful pen, and
an extraordinary amount of physical endurance, were spoken
of as facts known to every one; and he had a knowledge
which Sir George Campbell did not possess, of what is
meant by the phrase " live and let live," together with a
faculty of infusing a cheerful spirit into other men, while
carrying out his own ideas in cases of dispute. The
Viceroy and Sir George Campbell had appeared to clash
from the first. The Viceroy and Sir Eichard Temple
agreed from the first, and agreed to the end. To the

148 ENGLISH RULE AND

famine work I shall refer as a whole. In the relation
of Sir Eichard Temple to his officers and to Native India,
there cannot be a doubt that the change from Sir Greorge
Campbell was welcomed generally. The new lieutenant
governor did try to please. A noble project, worthy of
further reference, to create a Native Science Association had
for some years hung on the verge of success. Sir Richard
Temple pushed it over the verge and it succeeded, or at
all events lived. Even his financial speeches, opposed as
they justly were in much, exhibited a wonderfully facile
power in the mastery and arrangement of details. That
he soon forgot the opposition to him is perhaps a proof
that he cared merely for performing well the duties
of the passing hour, whereas Sir George Campbell would
have proceeded on some hard and fast line of prin-
ciple which years would not have obliterated. When
Sir Richard left Bengal for Bombay the native press was,
as far as I saw, all but unanimous in asserting tliat he had
meant to rule justly and welL His great qualifications
were, good administrative ability, cheerful spirits, an interest
in other people, and a valuable power of forgetting. He
could be a veritable lieutenant governor without state, and
could maintain his dignity without perpetually insisting
upon it in his intercourse with men of any rank. Sir
George Campbell, in the important speech referred to in
the chapter on law reform and finance, quoted from one of
his own statements (1874) a proof that he had not advo-
cated the heavy famine expenditure which his successor en-
tailed on the Government; that he drew a line between what
Government could and could not do. Probably the House
of Commons saw that this was not fair. Sir George, hav-
ing stated his view without repeating it, had no further
responsibility. If events confirmed it, he was right. If
events overturned it, the fault might have been in the
unforeseen. To establish such a view, as a test of foresight,
or as a justification of a policy, the view should not merely
have been stated in advance, but re-stated during the pro-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 149

gress of events. Chiefly, however, it will be observed that
again, by a change of lieutenant governor, the affairs of this
great province were completely disturbed, and in a social
sense were revolutionised. From Sir George Campbell to
Sir Eichard Temple was like a stride from one to another
of two opposite poles.

Sir Eichard Temple ,has been succeeded by Mr Ashley
Eden; and again there is a great change. Mr Eden's
public career has not been unquestioned, and there was a
time when he was bitterly denounced. I have, however,
fixed upon three facts, which I think will counterbalance
much criticism. First, that if Bengal had had a lieutenant
governor to choose he probably would have been its choice.
Secondly, that his administration in Burma was charac-
terised not merely by ability, but by a return to the noble
educational policy of Sir Arthur Phayre, which Major
General Fytche had abandoned. Thirdly, that before the
indigo commission in i860 Mr Eden gave evidence, which
for firmness and decision could hardly have been surpassed.
He was at the time magistrate at Cuttack. The indigo
disturbances were in question, and the Cuttack magistrate
in direct and forcible terms fixed much of the responsibility
upon at least some of the planters and their policy. These
facts I have taken from a report of Ms evidence, filling thirty-
seven large and closely-printed pages, which were published
in a separate form by a Native Association. He was ques-
tioned and cross-questioned, but his evidence was not
shaken.

The feeling of that time may be judged from the fact
that a respected missionary (of the Church Missionary
Society), the Eev. James Long, a devoted friend of the poor
tenants, was tried, fined, and imprisoned, for translating a
spirited little native drama, " Nil Durpan " (" The Minx)r
of Indigo"), now acted in all parts of India. Of the
native writer of the drama, a genial, cheerful man, to whom
bitterness was unknown, the reader will perhaps be pleased
to learn a little more later. He wrote his drama in good

1 50 ENGLISH RULE AND

faith for a public purpose, and he was present in court when
Mr Long was tried, and ready to exchange places with him
if that had been possible. The Bishop of Calcutta resol-
utely supported Mr Long (one of the last men in India to
excite ill feeling among the people) ; but the bitterness of
the time prevailed. The fine was paid at once by a native
gentleman, but Mr Long was imprisoned. It was at this
time that Mr Eden gave his evidence. Of its accuracy I
can say nothing, but it has an accurate appearance ; and
from that day to this Native India has stood, through good
report and evil report, by the outspoken witness.

In Burma Sir Arthur Phayre had found the whole
country covered with a network of Buddhist monastic
schools, and there was scarcely a Burmese child who could
not "read, write, and count;" but much of the education was
absurd. He conceived the idea of utilising the monasteries,
by sending to them teachers of a more advanced education.
No Burmese phoongyee (priest) can receive money " on any
pretence whatever." The priest sits down in the village
and teaches the children, the parents supplying him with
his daily food. In defending his policy, Sir Arthur Phayre
said : " We are asked, why not set to work independently of
the Buddliist monasteries ? My reply is, because the main
object is to establish a vernacular school in each village
and hamlet. It would be comparatively easy for Govern-
ment to do this in towns ; but most difficult to accomplish
it in the remote country places. But there is found in
each small hamlet a monastery supported by the people,
and the building maintained by them. These institutions
are regarded with reverence and affection, and are felt by
them to be the national schools."

To utilise these was the enlightened aim of Sir Arthur
Phayre. Major General Fytche reversed the policy. Mr
Eden returned to it; two more very clear indications of
how the social life of a province may be turned topsy-turvy
by these ever-recurring changes of administration. - The
character of Major General Fytche renders it almost un-

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 5 1

necessary for me to say that I am not impugning his
motives. It was simply a matter of opinion ; but I think
he was greatly in the WTong. As lieutenant governor,
Mr Eden is yet untried, but if he fail it certainly will
not be from any want of fair play on the part of Native
Ikngal. As a statesman, Sir George Campbell stands
foremost among the four lieutenant governors, and it is
unpleasant to add that he was the least popular of
the four. Perhaps he was too earnest, and saw too far
into the future, for ordinary mea Perhaps he fell back
too completely on " first principles," and disregarded ex-
isting facts. Assuredly he allowed too little for human
weakness, for habits interwoven with life, and assuredly,
also, he had a habit (markedly shown in England in the
case of ex-Colonel Baker) of not allowing a question once
raised to go to rest again. That he went to India with a
noble purpose, and to some extent gave that purpose a
noble life, will not be disputed in history.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FAITHS OF INDIA : HINDOOISM AND BRAHMOISM —
THE MOHAMMEDANS — A NAUTCH.

In September 1872 the walls of Calcutta were placarded
with an advertisement of a lecture, to be given by the min-
ister of the elder body of the Brahmists (termed the "Adi
Somaj " — ^Adi Church), on " the superiority of Hindooism
to all other religions." Eeference has been made in an
earlier chapter to one essential and vital difiference between
the two Brahmist Churches, both professing to follow the
great first Brahmist, Eajah Earn Mohun Eoy. The younger
body, the Church of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, may be
said to be very nearly akin to Unitarian Christianity. The
elder believe that Hindooism, although overgrown with
excrescences, has for its germ and origin the worship and
unity of the one true God, and that a return to the teach-
ing of the Vedas would be a return to a pure though a
poetical deism. I had at this time been in India about two
years, and had sent home what I must term strictly and
rigorously accurate, though not unquestioned, pictures of
what may be seen at the festivals of Doorga and Jugger-
nauth ; and I had also in those two years formed an im-
pression that Englishmen do not rightly comprehend the
faiths, or the men influenced by the faiths, of India. This
advertisement, however, was a startling one. Did the
minister of the Adi Somaj (a scholar and a gentleman I
afterwards found) actually mean to assert, in the face of the
missionary and educated English of Calcutta, that Hindoo-
ism is superior to Christianity? I found he did; and
before the controversy which his lecture caused had ended.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 153

I had come to the conclusion that the Hindoos may, in
God's good providence, and without an absolute adherence
to Christian channels of faith or fonn, find their way back-
ward to the key to all truth, the oneness of the Most High
God. I did not think, and do not now think, of defending
HindooisHL I did, and do, desire to show somewhat of the
character of many Hindoo scholars and thinkers who still
claim to be actuated and guided by Hindooism.

Since that time I have endeavoured in different ways to
draw attention to the literature of these two Brahmist
bodies — a literature so marvellously devotional, and so em-
bued with a spirit of love to God and men, that one might
seek far for a parallel to it, save in the most devotional works
of the old Catholic divines. I find such passages as these :
*'Is not progress to be perceived in the sacred writings
of the Christians also ? Was it not a great transition from
the Elohim of Moses to the God of the New Testament ? A
change passes over the Jewish religion from fear to love,
from power to wisdom, from the justice of God to the
mercy of God, from the nation to the individual, from this
world to another, from the visitation of the sins of the
father upon the children, to every * soul shall bear its own
iniquity ; ' from the fire, the earthquake, and the storm to
the ' still small voice.* . . . Let us be pure and holy
in our lives. Let us make sacrifices for our religion. . . .
Lord God, our Father, our Saviour, our Eedeemer ! to Thee
we look up for succour, for we are weak. Always grant the
light of Thy countenance, for that light alone is our only
consolation amid the darkness and dangers of our situation.
Forsake us not, but infuse patience, firmness, and fortitude
into our souls, so that we may stand as witnesses of Thy
glory to generations to come."

In the same spirit a writer of the same body claims for
Brahmoism the words of AbouBen Adhem's Dream — "Write
me as one who loves his fellow-men." This literature is ever
growing, and its spirit pertains to both the Brahmo bodies.
Each has its pampldets, its newspaper, its societies for moral

154 ENGLISH RULE AND

and social, as well as religious, progress. Both alike disown
Christianity, save as one of the good systems of religion
which " the education of the world " has produced from age
to age.

The minister of the Adi Somaj undertook to prove, in the
face of the younger Brahmo body, as well as of Christian
missionaries :

'' That Hindooism is superior to all other religions, because it owes
its name to no man ; because it acknowledges no mediator between
Gk)d and man ; because the Hindoo worships Qod as the soul of the
soul, and can worship in every act of life — in business, in pleasure, and
in social intercourse ; because while other scriptures inculcate worship
for the rewards it may bring, or the punishment it may avert, the
Hindoo is taught to worship Qod and practise virtue, for the love of
Qod and of 'sdrtue alone ; because, being imsectarian, and believing in
the good of all religions, Hindooism is non-proselytising and toler-
ant, as it also is devotional to an entire abstraction of the mind from
time and sense, and possesses an antiquity which carries it back to the
fountainhead of all thought"

These are some of the points which the lecturer endea-
voured to illustrate from history, and by well-put references
to existing facts.

His position was disputed by a genial and accomplished
missionary, the Eev. Dr Murray Mitchell, and by several
members of the younger Brahmo body. Dr Mitchell
claimed to include the Tantras among the sacred books of
the Hindoos, and adduced from them immoral passages,
which the minister of the Adi Somaj, Baboo Eajnarain
Bose, promptly disowned. " I am not," he said, " a Tantiist,
and therefore decline to enter into a discussion on tlie
merits and demerits of any of the Tantras. The position
which I took up in my lecture on the superiority of
Hindooism was this, that even the lowest Shastras, the
Tantras, not to mention the Vedas, the Upanishads, the
Smritis, and the Puranas, contain monotheistic sentiments
of the most exalted description." The yoimger Brahmo
body maintained that the Church represented by Baboo
Eajnarain Bose had drifted from the teachings of Rajah Ham

1.1

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 155

Mohun Eoy, and of his successor, Debender Nath Tagore,
neither of whom confined his search for truth to any one
system, and the latter of whom claimed all great and good
men as teachers, all "nature as revelation," and "pure
reason as minister." Baboo Jotentro Nath Tagore (a notable
Calcutta zeniindai*, kinsman and successor of Rajah Earn
Mohun lioy's distinguished disciple, Dwarkanath Tagore)
maintained that Hindooism is an illimitable fount of truth,
and in confirmation of this view produced many beautiful
passages from the Shasters.

This controversy produced little effect in India, so fai*
as making known the tenets of the two Brahmist Churches
was concerned ; but it was valuable to me, and it may be
so to the reader in two ways. First, it shows that while
the Church of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen is drifting
further from Hindooism, the older body is coming nearer to
Hindooism, while, at the same time, endeavouring to raise
it from an idolatry to a philosophy and a monotheistic
faith. Secondly, that the younger body in drifting from
Hindooism is not drifting any the nearer to Christianity.
The forms of worship of both Churches are thoroughly, and
at festive times markedly, Hindoo in the apparent intensity
of the devotion, and in the appeals to the senses by music
and flowers. An "Inquirer from the outside" during
this controversy having asked some questions indicating
liLS view of the greater simplicity, solemnity, devotion,
charity, and purity of the Gospel of Christ, the National
(Adi Somaj) Paper replied with some fine instances of
Hindoo charity, of honour paid to parents, and much
besides ; facts which may be freely admitted, while, at the
same time, a glimpse into these ancient writings, as into
the Koran, is sufficient to show what a marked contrast
they present to the New Testament. I cannot see whither
the spirit of inquiry now abroad in India is tending, but I
venture to ask the reader to view it in a generous and
kindly spirit.

It is now little more than a century since Ram Mohun

156 ENGLISH RULE AND

Roy (created Hajah by the King of Delhi) was bom, of a
high caste and powerful family in Burdwan. Instructed
in all the learning of his caste, he nevertheless began to
doubt, as Sakya Muni ages before had doubted. He studied,
travelled, sought communion with men of intelligence
wherever he could find them. Finally he began to teach,
and in one tract "Against the Idolatry of all Religions," made
himself a host of enemies and opponents, including many
missionaries. He certainly held that the Vedas, so far
from inculcating idolatry, established the worship of the
one God. He selected portions of the words of Christ, and
wrote of them with enthusiasm. His purity never was
disputed. He died in Bristol in 1833; and a little later
his disciple and friend, Dwarkanath Tagore, marked by a
monument the grave of one of the true teachers of men.
After some years the mantle of the great leader fell upon
Debender Nath Tagore. About twenty years later still
suspicions began to creep into the body, chiefly through
the appeals of Keshub Chunder Sen, that the Vedas were
not sure ground. In 1866 the Progressive Somaj became
an independent Church.

A suggestive picture of Baboo Keshub in his early
struggles was given some years ago by one of his friends,
an American Unitarian minister, Mr Dall. " I remember,"
he said, "how simply Keshub rose one evening in the
British India Society, and proposed 'that this society
cultivate habits of prayer.* The presiding padree (Chris-
tian minister) reminded him that he had no God to
whom to pray." The Unitarian assured him he had a
God, and a God who never turned away from earnest prayer.
The visit of Keshub to England, and his eloquent repre-
sentation of the feeling and wrongs of his countrymen, are
still in the public mind. Let me say that the Brahmists
have disowned caste, risen altogether above idolatry, and
partly above the seclusion of woman ; that they are ardent
friends of education and temperance, and of the re-marriage
of widows ; that, in short, they represent new-bom impulses

.V. / TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 57

of li<i;lit and freedom. Their relation to missions will be
partly shown in the next chapter.

We turn now to Hindooism as a creed. The Jugger-
nauth Car (at Maliish, near Calcutta) is as large as a moun-
tain cottage, and elaborately carved. Except at the festival
times, it sUmds in the village and is covered, but not sacred.
At a stated time the god is presumed to enter the car ; and
the people in thousands draw him with long ropes, and
amid wild shouts of rejoicing that may be heard for miles,
for a considerable distance along the road. It is at this
time that the deaths, by accident or self-immolation, occur.
There were several deaths during the time I knew India, but
in all cases proved accidents. The festival lasts about three
weeks, and I made a point of seeing it under all aspects by
day and night. I described it as not unlike an English fair,
only without " drink." Men, women, and children came
in multitudes from all the country round, bringing theii*
offerings of flowers for the god, and a few copper coins (a
penny, or less perhaps, in value) for the priests. By day
they fonned a sea of human faces ; by night they slept in
thousands by the road-side. Merry-go-rounds, Aunt Sallys,
kite-flying, marble playing, and other like diversions, pre-
vailed. I neither heard an angry word nor saw an angry
look among all those innumerable crowds. A young priest
of the car I knew well — a poor man earning only a few
rupees a month, yet managing (gratuitously) in liis evening
hours two schools, for boys and girls, and open to any
inspector. Some said, " The picture you give is a defence
of Juggernauth." I replied, "It is a simple picture; a
statement of fact;" and when the time again came, I
repeated the picture. I was told that at Orissa the
festival was bad. I only saw that at Mahish. In 1874
a wheel of the car was broken, and the festival was for-
bidden ostensibly as dangerous, though the engineer
of the Hooghly Bridge vouched for the repairs. Sir
Richard Temple was appealed to in vain. This year, I am
glad to say, the veto has been withdrawn by Mr Eden,

158 ENGLISH RULE AND

and I think to the credit of his common sense and good
feeling.

The other great ceremonial of Bengal whicli I was able
to observe, was the festival of the goddess Doorga, whicli (as
a holiday) continues a fortnight, about the end of the rains,
in autumn. During the festival proper, every kind of
work is laid aside; even English enterprise for the time
ceases. Doorga is an incarnation of Kali, the destroyer,
who is worshipped with a fierce ceremonial, but as Doorga
the goddess is the centre of a genial festival. The image,
often made at great cost, is set up in many houses, and at
the appointed time the goddess is implored, in her mighty
power, to divide herself, and inhabit the images which
people come in from all the neighbourhood to worship.
Each shrine is then sacred, while dramas, and nautches,
and music, and all manner of festivity, prevail throughout
the house. It seemed to me like a feast of flowers, so
universal were flowers both as oflerings and adornments.
When the goddess again departs from the image, the
sacredness departs, and the deserted tenement, tossed about
as a thing of play, is finally thro^vn into the Ganges. In
reality it is an assertion that the image while inhabited
by the goddess is dual, and that the image, deserted by
the goddess, is but a dead thing.

I asked a young Hindoo, distinguished at the Calcutta
University, and the son of a Hindoo scholar, a very poor
man, to give me in writing his and his father's idea of their
faith. He told me in simple and graceful language the
history (from the Hindoo point of view) of the Vedas (say,
fix)m fifteen to thirteen centuries older than our era) ; and
insisted much upon their cardinal doctrine that there is
but one Supreme Spirit, the Lord and Creator of the
Universe. "The three manifestations of the Deity —
Brahma, the creating principle; Vishnu, the preserving
principle; and Siva, the destroyer — are merely mentioned in
the Vedas." The Institutes of Menu (perhaps five centuries
later) developed from the Vedas an elaborate system of

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 59

religion, governing caste, social observance, labour, every-
thing known in Hindoo life, and so minutely entering into
that life that nothing escapes it from long before the
child*s birth to old age. Ceremonies are observed with
reference to the unborn babe ; great ceremonies when the
boy Brahmin receives his sacred thread, learns the most
sacred verse of the Vedas, and so becomes one of the
" twice-born." As ages passed, the faith of the Vedas was
still further supplanted by the Puranas, which gradually
increased the gods and goddesses, till now they are in-
numerable. Everything in nature, every flower and tree,
sea and land, sun and moon, peace and war, wealth and
poverty, joy and grief, love and hate, disease and death,
has its god. Kama, god of love, Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu
and goddess of fortune or abundance, and Ganesha, the
remover of difficulties, are very favourite deities. Here,
then, from the time of the Puranas, the principle of mono-
theism was gradually effaced, and the faith in some
particular god began to take the place of good works.
Teachers rose from time to time, and, as we have seen,
continue to rise, to attempt the restoration of the old
faiths; but tlie spirit of the faith in power has had a charmed
life, and returns again and again victorious. Siva the
destroyer is represented as wandering about in dismal
places, surroimded by ghosts and goblins ; Doorga or Kali
is his wife. My friend wrote :

" Human sacrifices were formerly offered to Kali, and she was
supposed to clehght in carnage on her altars. On such occasions one
of the sects of the worshippers of Kali meet in parties of both sexes
to feast on flesh and s})irituous liquors, and to indulge in the grossest
debauchery. Very few of the followers of Kali join this sect ; the
mass of the people are hardly aware of its existence, and it is looked
on with horror and contempt by all orthodox Hindoos."

The incarnations of Vishnu have been nine; he became
a fish to recover the Vedas; a boar, to raise the world sunk
imder the waters ; a tortoise ; a man, to avenge injustice
on a tyrant ; a Brahmin dwarf, to outwit a king who had

i6o ENGLISH RULE AND

defied the gods; a Brahmin hero, who extirpated the
Klhatrya race ; the great Kama, and Balaram and Krishna.
The tenth incarnation is yet to come. Rama is the hero
of Valmiki's great poem, the national epic of India, the
*' Ramayana." The hero was, the story tells us. King of
Oude, and his whole life one of self-denial and piety. He
was banished by his father ; his beautiful queen, Sita, was
stolen from him by the giant Ravuna, and borne away to
Ceylon, from whence Rama recovered her by the help of
an army of monkeys. Sita, chaste, beautiful, lotus-eyed,
is the type-woman of India.^ Krishna is the merry god,
whose festival is a pastoral, not very restrained or delicate.
Doorga has two festivals. Of the greater, already referred
to, my friend wrote :

" This pooja is continued for three days. People are liberally fed
with rice and sweetmeats, and in families which are not Vaishnuv flesh
of goats is even allowed for guests. This is the occasion of a Hindoo's
greatest rejoicings. The members of a family, both male and female,
wherever scattered, meet together. The children have new clothes and
shoes, and even grown-up men and women are not at all behind them
in matters of dress. All seem merry, and the Doorgapooja holidays
are the merriest days in a Hindoo's life. On the fourth day the
goddess is thrown into the river, and we return home from the river-
side dispirited, though in our gayest dresses. We feel as if something
great has passed away. Especially this is the case in famiHes where
the goddess was worshipped. They feel a gloomy vacuity. Still it
is a melancholy pleasure. The evening is spent in paying our
respects to our superiors, parents, imcles, elder brothers, and cousins.
Our neighbours also get a share of those respects. The business is
rendered very agreeable by the liberal allowance of sweetmeats dealt
out in all the famiUes.''

I have aimed here to place before the reader in very
brief terms an intelligent Hindoo's view of his own faith.
It will be seen that he does not view that faith in quite
so dismal a light as it is viewed by many Englishmen.
A work on " The Land of the Tamulians," translated from
the German of the Rev. R R. Baierlein, by Mr Gribble of

1 "The Raniayana in English Vene." Ralph T. U. Griffitli, Benares.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. i6i

the Madras Civil Service, presents an exceedingly fine
view of the Hindoo faith. " The Rig Veda," the author
says, " sung perhaps before the time of Moses," seems as if
" composed by men newly awake and gazing in wonder on
the things around them ^vithout being perfectly masters
of their senses." The second period, he continues, the
collection of the Vedas by Vyasa, was the real origin of
the Vedas as theology. The third period took all the true
essence of the Vedas away. It is curious to observe in
the deification of nature, or the vital soxil of nature, many
views not unlike some held by M. Auguste Comte, who
has now many, and some ardent, disciples among the edu-
cated Hindoos.

A person — " An Inquirer " — chanced some years ago to
say that, while these questions were brewing, as it were
like yeast, throughout India, the chief aim of the Christian
ought to be practical charity, after the example of the
Great Teacher who went about doing good. He continued :

" India needs a greiit spirit of toleration to efface the footprints of
conquerors who fastened upon tlie people new creeds. The Hindoo
people have been under the impression that one of the conditions of
English as of other rule, was an ultimate destruction of all the
national customs as well as the national faith. The East India
Company strove to erase this feeling, and strove in a way that laid it
open to the charge of not caring whether the people were degraded
or not, so l<jug as the Company's balance-sheets were right. A
Christian missionary who went to India in that spirit would be an
evil ; would have no right there at all. But he who possesses a spirit
of toleration, who can bear and forbear, who can admit what he finds
of truth and beauty in the old landmarks of the land, and at the
same time hold up a truer and more beautiful faith — the faith that
never yet divided men into castes — could scarcely fail to be a bene-
factor to India."

To this view so expressed there was no end of responses,
and I know that the writer of the words would abide by
them in the hour of death as by a true faith. Viewing
Hindooism in its relation to classical mythology, it is not
difficult to perceive a similarity and a contrast. The

L

i62 ENGLISH RULE AND

points of resemblance are many; but while the Hindoo
faith is so essentially fanciful, even when it runs in every
vein of the national life, the Greek faith was as essentially
practical, without being suffered to so essentially enter
into the life-blood. Hercules, to fall back on a well-known
similitude, is like a hero in the dream of Bunyan ; Kama
is like a creation of the dream of Shelley. Hercules is as
real as the heroes of Plutarch; Kama is essentially of
dreamland. In Homer the council of gods is even more
distinct than a Eoman senate. In Valmiki the decisions
of the gods are arrived at in the clouds. The Hindoo
idealised abstraction ; the Greek laboui*. The Hindoo had
an army of monkeys for Eama. Hercules, the incarnation
of individual might and manhood, had his club. Neither
mythology affected to give any clear glimpses into the life
after death. The Hindoo at his highest i-eached to far the
more subtle and profound truths, but the Greek attained
that practical freedom amid which less subtle truths coidd
be carried out to more certain results. The Hindoo never
yet saw that " God made of one blood all the nations of
men ; " that " in the image of God created He man." The
Greek heathen had arrived proximately at that deei)
truth even before Christianity. Caste had its value in old
times, and has its glory still. That it will rise above itself
is certain. That it will become lost in Christianity is what
I cannot yet see.

To Mohammedan views and diflSculties several refer-
ences have been made. In number the Mohammedans
have generally been counted at only about one-fifth of that
of the Hindoos, taking India through, and in the Madras
Presidency they are but a very small number as compared
with the Hindoos. In Bengal, however, they have in-
creased, almost imperceptibly, till the late census (1872-73)
showed them to be very nearly half the Hindoo population
— 20,600,000 against 42,600,000. The increase of Moham-
medans Sir George Campbell deemed the main fact
brought out by the census, and the increase had in many

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 163

cases been where least of all expected, while where it
had been looked for as a certainty, the increase had been
comparatively small. Dr Hunter says that, in Bengal in
1 87 1, of 21 1 1 State offices 1338 were held by Europeans,
681 by Hindoos, and only 91 by Mohammedans. In
Madras, till lately, Mohammedan education was hardly
a name. Lord Hobart, on assuming the government of
that province, set himself to rectify the great wrong. He
ordered schools to be at once opened for Mohammedans
on their own principles of education. The director of
public instruction informed him that two schools were
already provided for Mohammedans in the Presidency
of Madras, and that more was impracticable. Qualified
teachers, even, he said, coxild not be had. To so low a
state had these people fallen. The new Governor freely
admitted the difficulty, but demanded the schools, and as
an inducement to learning decided that a certain number
of State offices should be reserved for Mohammedans alone.
This minute, published at the end of 1872, was one of the
noblest ever recorded in India. And it is pleasant to
add that Lord Hobart, while sharply criticised by some
Englishmen, was generously supported by the Bengal native
newspapers, which suffered no race hatred to obscure their
sense of an act of simple justice.

Perhaps tliis chapter could not conclude more fitly than
with a brief description of a family festival, one of the
central features of wliich was a nautch. I was present at
this festival in 1874, at the joint-house set apart for
festivals, worship, and amusements by a somewhat notable
Hindoo family. When Clive, who was no linguist, once
required some Persian letters translated, and hesitated to
trust any Mohammedan, a young adventurous Hindoo did
the work, and did it so well that he became Olive's trusted
moonshee, and died the Rajah Nobho Bjishna. He was a
shrewd man, and while others doubted whether English
rule would or would not stand, he bought property on the
strength of that rule. When the Government required

i64 ENGLISH RULE AND

ground for the extension of Fort William, he sacrificed part
of what is now the Maidan, and received for it what is now
termed the native town of Calcutta. On his death the
property was divided, and became joint family property.
It was in 1874 represented by two middle-aged men, uncle
and nephew — the uncle, by one of the most pronounced
laws of native life, "head of the family;" the nephew, by the
grace of Lord William Bentinck first, and finally of Lord
Northbrook, Eajah in succession. The families have grown
to almost a little village. Each branch has an imposing
house, and an income ; and in the centre of the property —
in the centre also of native Calcutta — is a temple and
theatre, dedicated to poojah (worship), and maintained by
a special fund, which no branch of the family can touch.
Such Ls the present state of the descendants of a man who
fearlessly cast in his lot with Clive at the turning-point of
our history in India.

At this curiously memorable place, in company with aii
English lady and gentleman, I saw Doorga for the last
time, late one night in October 1874. We drove out
at ten o'clock, a distance of three miles, from Calcutta,
through streets crowded with people from end to end, lit
up with glaring dismal oil lamps, distressing to horses as
to human beings, and further distinguished by shouts and
cries and songs and laughter as of pandemonium. At the
end of the pilgrimage we found squares of buildings in one
blaze of light, and at the door of one of the chief buildings
were received with high courtesy and gentlemanliness by
the head of the family, politely introduced to his chil-
dren and grandchildren, treated to attar of roses, and pre-
sented each with a small rose bouquet. Then, in spite of
advanced guards, we had to fight our way into the poojah
hall. The cliief hall was covered in the centre with red
cloth, and filled at the sides by all ranks and orders of
men and women, English and Native, the latter seated on
the floor. All at once the band struck up " Grod save the
Queen," reminding one that Her Majesty is sovereign of

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 165

millions of the worshippers of Doorga, as well as of
millions of tlie believers in Mahomet, and holds the sword
of justice for the good of many races. At the end of each
of the large halls — immense buildings — was a costly
Doorga. There were English ladies and gentlemen ; young
English lads full of life and merriment; grave elderly
Hindoo gentlemen, and equally grave younger ones. Be-
yond these was a promiscuous crowd, which no man could
have numbered, and wliose infinite chatterings no man
could have restrained. High above all, on a kind of veiled
verandah (purdah), a number of figures flitted backward
and forward, apparently bent upon finding here or there
the best place for seeing. These were the ladies of the
large family. In the centre of the room a young girl
came foi-ward, -svith two lads behind her, and one on each
side — she to dance, they to play and sing. The young
lady advanced with measured steps, as to the "Dead
March in Saul," but making up in vehemence of gesture
and sharp little stamps of her foot for the restrained
motion. The dances are mostly in straight lines, the lady
moving her body from side to side, with her face in one
direction ; now throwing up her hands over her head, now
entwining her fingers nervously to indicate some inex-
pressible emotion, now lowering her voice to almost a
whisper, now raising it till it filled the hall, and through-
out all, though never ungraceful, seldom giving to any
motion what in an English ball-room would be termed
grace. Eive faces perfectly immobile, limbs and bodies
which seemed boneless, feet which never appeared to rise
an inch from the ground — such are the main features of
an Indian nautch. English tumbling, with the inevitable
English* clown, followed. Meanwhile the invited company
were conducted to the upper rooms, elegantly furnished, and
in many instances arranged with good taste; the pictures
(for a wonder) in the right places; the books, English in
most cases, within reach of the comfortable ottomans; the
writing-desks ready for use. From the balcony of these

i66 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA,

rooms one looked at midnight on a vast mass of human
beings, in a scene lit up by those oil lamps. In the
principal room we foxmd seated on a dais a young Prince
of Nepal, Sir Jung Bahadoor's nephew, spangled with
jewels ; and English ladies began laughingly to compute
the value of his cap, which was perhaps worth a king's
ransom. "How much do you think?" one lady said,
wishing to be exact. The prince was a young man, with
a quiet impassive countenance, a lithe active form — and
the jewels! He spoke a little English, but never smiled,
though laughter prevailed on every side. When spoken
to he gazed for a moment through spectacles (which rather
became him), and answered abstractedly. English ladies
laughed and talked, but never attracted his attention
or caused him to turn his eyes to right or left from
the princely straight line. By his side sat by far the most
remarkable looking person in the room, if not in the
assembly — a short, dried-up, and to all appearance rather
old man, with a feather in his cap, a silver badge a little
below it, and under all an eye like a hawk*s. At his
girdle was the Ghoorka "Kookerei," which told a tale.
He wore a closely-buttoned blue coat, almost like a French
uniform. He was the aide-de-camp of the Prince of
Nepal. When the prince rose to go away, the aide-de-
camp followed him closely. In the carriage they sat side
by side, and any one who had meant mischief to the prince
would have found the attempt perilous. Such is the
Hindoo nautch at the poojah time. Provided by the
wealthy, it is, in part at least, freely shared by the poorest;
an institution at once of festivity and faith.

CHAPTER XV.

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS : FROM A SECULAR POINT OF

VIEW.

Native faiths and Christian missions in India are topics so
intimately intertmned that it is impossible to fairly con-
sider the one apart from the other ; and as two parts of one
subject I shall ask the reader to view them. I wish, hav-
ing seen a little missionary work in Egypt, that my notes
could have been continued, in an ampler form, by Bombay,
and so onward. But wishing also to deal chiefly with what
I strove in a legitimate way to comprehend, I cannot say
that either on my first visit to Bombay, or subsequently, I
saw sufficient of the inner life — the everyday work — of its
missions, to speak on any point with personal knowledge.
It would serve no good purpose to refer to the massive
missionary institutions of Bombay as mere "sights." If
they are not more than that, they are as sounding brass or
a tinkling cymbal.

At Benares, however, I began a series of notes on mis-
sions, ending only when I left India the second time ; and
I can say that as I began I ended, with no idea that mis-
sionaries are all heroes, or anything like heroes, and with
no idea that missionary work is other than obedience to
the command : " Go ye into all the world and preach the
Gospel to every creature." In one case in Benares I think
I saw the fact below the surface of missionary work. I
found the Principal of the College of the London Mission-
ary Society, the Eev. M. A. Sherring, in the midst of his
everyday duties, and Mrs Sherring in the midst of her
everyday duties — mother and father of a race of yoimg

i68 ENGLISH RULE AND

men and women, who may yet have a great influence on
India. Here I learned what became to me like the open-
ing of a new life of knowledge of many subjects, which no
man surely would affect to despise ; and my first was one of
my best views of Indian missions. A grave simple ser-
mon — and information, to myself — pointed by memorials of
Suttee and Budha, by devotees, and temples, and sacred
wells, by school lessons, and by an apparently all-pervading
missionary influence, were my first real pictures of those
missions upon which England relies to do what England
rejoices to do by substitute ; for which Englishmen certainly
spend money freely, sending money in, it should be re-
membered, not, save in exceptional cases, taking money out
of India, a fact that applies to no other Anglo-Indian insti-
tution, or class of men whatever. I sought out in Benares
three American members of the Society of Friends — hus-
band and wife, and a young lady who assisted them. I
found them in the densely peopled native town, learning
the languages of India, eschewing European society, and
devoting themselves entirely to their work ; but missing,
perhaps, even in that way, one great element of usefulness,
for the missionaries of Benares have a method of meeting
together, and helping each other to connect past and pre-
sent times ; to use, as the apostle used against Athens, an
old literature in the service of a newer faith. The three
Friends were afterwards compelled to leave Benares — I fear
sick — and their generous experiment so far came to an end.
Mr Sherriug's position as a teacher and writer — as a great
missionary — is too well known to need further mention here.
At Serampore I found the fine Baptist college of " Carey,
Marshman, and Ward" under an earnest and cultivated
principal ; and I had the advantage of comparing my own
perceptions daily, and for a long period, with the more
matured views of a Baptist minister and teacher of great
practical ability, the Eev. Thomas Martin. I saw my
friend labouring in the midst of his native Christians in a
Christian village, devised and provided by the lat6 Mr John

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 169

Clarke Marshman, the historian, and named after him. In
particular I saw him receive into the Baptist communion,
by " dipping," a number of young men and women, as a
fareweU to the village, on the eve of his departure for
England. I gathered, however, that the well-intended close
village experiment had not had a marked success. I ga-
thered too that the lives of " Carey, Marshman, and Ward "
— in one sense landmark lives — ^had not been all smooth or
free from differences, and that their work and influence, from
that time to the present, had been the subject of curious
controversy in Native Bengal. A pretty Lutheran church
was, after the cession of Serampore by the Danes, handed
over to the Bishop of Calcutta, and is now the " station
church." Much of this he who runs may read in Serampore.

He would not, however, so readily read the exact truth of
one other form of European religious life. He might live in
Serampore for months, might learn all about the Serampore
and Barrackpore churches and the Baptist chapel, and yet
not know even of the existence in one of the back streets
of the place of a really living church of the Jesuits. By
wandering out of the common track he would find such a
church, crowded to the door — with poor people too — and,
what is more, with unmistakable worshippers. There is no
sahiWsm in that church at any rate. Eich and poor, Euro-
pean and Native, with a large number of the mixed popula-
tion, meet together there, and learn from a cultivated Jesuit
priest that the outer sign of an inward faith is a virtuous
daily life. This good priest, an Italian, was so singularly
unacquainted witli English creed bitterness, that having
procured for a Protestant an introduction with a view to
presentation to the Pope, he said, "And pray ask his Holiness
for a blessing for me " — utterly oblivious of the fact that to
some Protestants (not to this one, however) the blessing of the
Pope would have sounded rather like a ban. It was, I think,
altogether conceived in a spirit as beautiful as that of a child.

Of St Xavier's College much might be said. One of
the priests, Father Shea, a professor or teacher, edits a

I70 ENGLISH RULE AND

scholarly and able newspaper — the Irvdo-European Corre-
spondence — marked by great forbearance to native customs.
Another, Father Lafonte, is the best scientific lecturer
in Calcutta, and ready, as we shall see hereafter, to
assist in all good, especially scientific work. Finally, and
chiefly. Archbishop Steins labours harder than any Calcutta
coolie, and not merely gives eflicient headship to a host
of varied Catholic institutions, but secures the affection
of Native India; not encroaching on its rights of con-
science, and never, of course, hiding anything of his own
faith. Of the nuns a story of real and unceasing sacrifice
might be told ; of labour, without punkahs or ice, or any of
the means whereby life is made endurable under an Indian
sun ; of ministrations, in a true sense, by the bedsides of
the dying, and of especial kindness to the young. One of
the best testimonials to their impartiality is the fact that Pro-
testant children too are entrusted to them here and elsewliere
in India, and that the gentle influence of the teachers rises
above creed. I should say that the Catholics are less in-
debted to outside pecuniary help than any other class of
missionaries in India, and hence are more thoroughly
beyond the* charge (often a very stupid charge) of buying
proselytes. In Madras tliere is a case on record of a body
of wild boatmen, who, having a tax remitted, went in a
body and transferred it to tlieir priest, who accepted and
utilised it. I was myself gravely reproved only a few
weeks ago by the Bengalee newspaper for having asserted
that the Pope sanctioned the massacre of St Bartholomew.
The feeling in favour of tlie Roman Catholics was not, as
we have seen feeling in England, the implied approval of
one extreme as a reproof to another. An anti-Popery
lecture would not be received with approval, or indeed
with anything but sarcasm by Native Bengal. The
Catholics have the good fortune, as a Church, not to belong
to the conquering race ; and the peculiarity stands them in
good stead.

Reference has been made in the preceding chapter to the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 171

progi'ess of Positivism in India. I became acquainted in
1870, chiefly by the attacks made upon him, with a gentle-
man who was an earnest educationalist and an earnest
Comtist, Mr Samuel Lobb, who in 1874 returned to Eng-
land to die. People wished to write against Mr Lobb,
and, in some cases, without their names, as they would not
have dared to write mth their names. He was, they said.
perverting the minds of the young. As a journalist I deter-
mined to go more deeply into this charge, and I found it
utterly baseless. I found him a generous, unselfish man,
doing all manner of good, without intruding his beliefs on
any one, and least of all on his pupils. The only time I
ever saw him was in a lodging-house in Calcutta, and
our conversation was closed by a flow of blood to the
mouth of the then fast-sinking teacher. The last I heard
of him was in a chaste and restrained address in which his
struggles for light and truth were beautifully pictured by
Mr Congreve in London. I mention Mr Lobb as a mis-
sionary, though he would not himself have claimed the
name. He pointed to the higher ideals of duty, and his
life in India was not in vain.

Soon after my first arrival in India I visited three
colleges in Calcutta — the Cathedral (Church of England)
College, under Mr Dyson; the Established Church of
Scotland College, under Dr Ogilvie ; and the Free Church
College (Dr DufTs), under Dr Mitchell. What I heard I
took away in exact notes, and published. From Dr
Mitchell's class, in many cases of fine young men, we had
these among other answers :

" * Here is a stranger who wishes to know your thoughts on some
social and religious topics. Tell us what you deem the tendency of
thought among the young men of Calcutta.' Here was a pause.
Then : * Do you mean religiously ? ' * Yes, in that or any way.' * I
think that most of the educated young men lean to the £rahmo
Somaj, or to philosophical inquiry, or unhehef.' Others expressed
assent. * Why do you think so ? ' Second student : * Because I see
Brahmoism growing, and people prepared to make sacrifices for it.'
*You mean, then, that there is persecution?* * Great persecution,

«vsai '•.'.' -Xi iiaiiii*«- ' 'jui ■^.n *- jji'v naxr^ -L:ii:iii-.L ^ to^ aitta
vwiftT*-* J *^u* *a:Li.rLn»* T!iiri finiLrfir • y -r nii n . "iiEiiLrv*L
?vir*ii -ST .r '.!Xi* .a i -ir.nrfuiiL Tie '-u.icnnt irr irr 'friir^-i

' T^. ' "^a-' ' ' 2>^-aru»*t if 'Ok j'.n-.'n-, d.r Tminr;t. r- "line ?*trinLi
'V* ■> ;.!-•** ff;m V. "-(i-. "Ut* '-.•r>c Till? iJiar ■r'^ti: .ir^L Zt::^ ti r

Ivxh I/: ir:v,;.r:ll iz^i Lrr •>j:It-> k±i.ilT invi-ei i
iaci/*z*'j ^xJcjiT zjtsj:^.. fror^ il^ rsro '.1:.^^=^^ :

think irukt itr* i'nzj'.^cy-zjt ar* liii iL. C'Lri^ciiiirT ! * - 1 ilizi :li.:
#ir%vn from nr^Anv V/^rtftA-' • I>.r voti tLhik t?.j: w-jth. =::: Cir_<i.vn::v

* ■

htjl for Crtri.»tUnitT,' *Ijo tou likr i:.r Ei'V i^ i rtacinj r.xk;*
H^^nnl : * V'-ry m«#tli/ * Do tou likr :: i- wril i5 Sh4k^r<::irt i *
'JMt^/ * Or' Milton r 'Yw; »*K.rr/ -Or Ea.:.:!i or MicaiilAvr

* Yhh, lj^tt';rtFi;^ri anv of tL*:m.' * Th*:n whv flvn't tou c. nie ofttner
t/? r*d»d it ? ' * We haven't time if we are lo p^aw the eianiin^::: n>.'

* WliAt Ao vou think the vounjr men of Ecn jal incline t.>. as a rale
afUrr th'-y leave <yillege ? I ask becan.^ there is a common belief that
they often fall mUt drinkin;: ha);it.«, an^l ar>? lost to society T A
Ktiulenty fthaking his head gravely : Mt is a sa*l truth, sir.' • What is
the cauM of it?' Another young man : * It comes from the West/ ;it
whif:h th'rn.' was a laugh. * Is the balance one of good or evil for
KngliJth erliuation?' A numl>er: 'Good.' 'What do you mean by
Maying that int^ixication comes from the West 1 The Englishmen
you t'ouu: in contact with are not drinkers.' ' No ; we have two
exarnfileK, one gofj^l and the other l)ad ; unfortunately, some among
UM think the latter the lietter worth imitating.' * Do you think that
(joveniment could do anything ? ' 'It could prevent the opening of
drinking-phu'<"*.' * Would that l)e good ? ' Several : * Yes ;' and one :

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 173

If it could be (lone without infringing liberty.' 'Do any of }'du
believe in caste V A decided * No.' * Yet you practise it ?' * Yes ;
it is hard to break away from family and friends.' "

This, as far as it goes, is an exact photograph, and I do
not know that it ever was disputed, though a question was
not unreasonably raised as to whether it would not convey
an incorrect impression of the tendency of missionary
education. If we are not making Christians, one or two
;Q:entlemen said, it will be to very little piupose that we
are making scholars. Dr ilitchell said :

" The Bndimists have inferred that the pupils ai*e coming round to
the Somaj. ... I regret that I did not request the young men
to be more exact in their phra.seology. I abstained from doing so
because I wished to interfere as little as possible with the entire
spontaneousness both of the thought and of the expression. . . .
Your convei-sation was with two classes — ^tho students of the third
and fourth years. Our incjuiries have extended to all the classes, and
1 am prepared to make decided statements regarding the college as a
whole. There is not, in the whole college, so far as we can discover,
one registered or initiated Brahmo ; not one member, strictly speak-
ing, of either the original or progressive Somaj. There does not
seem to be one student who avows himself an adherent, in any definite
sense, of either Somaj. Further — and this is exceedingly important —
the young men still with us who, on the occasion of your visit,
described themselves as favourable to Brahmoism, assure me that
they di<l not mean to imply that they were opposed to Chiistianity,
and that in fact they used the term Brahmoism as synonymous with
Theism. No one when asked admits himself to be a free-thinker in
the sense of infidel. Inclined to free Hwught seems to have been a
gi-iindiose fonn of expression for inquircrSj seekers after triUh. With
regard to Revelation. It is always deliaite and hazardous to ask in
a class of young Hindoos, whether any of them are inclined to
C'hristianity ; and I have avoided doing so. But when the (juestion
was put a few (hiys ago— Do you regard the evidence for the truth
(•f the Bible strong or weak? the general answer was 'Strong.'
*Vt'ry strong?' from several the answer was, *Yes, very strong.'
Are there, then, no infidels, in the sense of men opposed to Chris-
tianity, among our pupils ? I do not assert that there are none. But
generally, when men are infidels, it will be foimd that they have
only recently joined us — having come from purely secular schools.
We do not profess to work miracles. We cannot, in a month or two,
do away with the effects of non-religious teaching. But 1 am pre-

174 ENGLISH RULE AND

pared to prove that, as a general rule, belief in the truth of the Gospel
is proportioned to the length of time that the Bible has been carefully
read and faithfully explained."

The foregoing photograph must be viewed by the light
of this letter of one of the most accomplished and kind-
hearted of missionaries ; but all the same the photograpli
was a thoroughly accurate one, intended neither to help
nor hinder missionary work, but to present a fact. Dr
Ogilvie died a little later, and then it was remembered
what a brave and modest teacher he had been. His deter-
mination in stating bare truths, and braving all conse-
quences, was particularly insisted upon. One gentleman
said to me: "Very recently, at the end of a missionary
conference, Dr Ogilvie renewed a discussion as to whether the
Hindoo students did or did not like to be taught the Bible.
' I was speaking,' he said, ' to some of our boys about this,
and I said, " So-and-so tells me that his students like the
Bible lesson." " Did they tell him that ? " said the young
men. " Yes," I replied. "And did he believe them ? "
*' Yes," said I. "And would you have believed us if we
told you that ? " " Oh, no," said I.' " This chamcteristic
story may perhaps exhibit more than the true character of
the teacher, if the reader will observe how thoroughly both
he and his class entered into the humour of "And did he
believe them ? " and into that of the inimitable " Oh, no " —
the humour of a most serious man, whose very lightest
words conveyed ^visdom. The value of the joke in this
case to the students would perhaps be greater than that of
a sermon. Of Dr Mitchell and Mrs Mitchell, I need only
say that in schools, and charities of every name, among
soldiers and sailors, their genial labours were notable, and
some kind words from Native Bengal followed them when
they left India.

In September 1872 I saw, in his literary workshop, an
aged Baptist missionary, Dr Wenger, at the very point of
completing a translation of the Bible into Sanscrit. He
began the work in 1847, *^^ (with much else to do at

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 1 75

the same time) completed it in 1872 — twenty-five years
of laboui*. Three days after I had seen him he was so
good as send me a copy of the last volume of his trans-
lation. The old man, little seen, and apart from his own re-
ligious community little heard of, had gradually completed
one of the greatest literary works ever attempted — giving
to the Brahmin, in the classical language of India (the
language he delights to read), the book of the Christian's
God.

In 1874 a native missionary, the Eev. Narayan Sheshadri,
of the Bombay Presidency, was on his way home from
England, where he had been seeking help for a Christian
village system, to be open to men of all creeds, so long as
their conduct was good. This was reversing Mr Marsh-
man's idea, and the missionary claimed for it that the plan
had found favour both in England and India; and that
Sir Salar Jung had allowed the purchase of land for the
experiment in the Nizam's dominions. The plan had also
some time previously been laid before a missionary confer-
ence, and had met with approval. Of the missionary him-
self there was but one opinion long before the end of the
voyage. At first it was thought by one or two people that
he might be made to look foolish, but that was found to be
an error. Then he preached, and taught the young sailors,
and won his way to the kindly regard of every one by his
kindly good temper. If still alive, he is, I should say, an
efficient missionary.

Many persons have asked why, with such men in India,
the native churches should not be independent of England.
An obituary notice of Mr Marshman, who died this year,
says : " He held that India never could be converted by
Europeans, and that the business of missionaries was to
raise up native apostles." jMr Sherring, in a tract on " The
Evangelisation of India," writes: "It has been said that
there are upwards of two thousand native agents of the differ-
ent missionary societies in India, men who are paid regular
salaries from foreign mission funds to preach to people of

176 ENGLISH RULE AND

their own race," and he adds that there have been cases in
which, when the pay ceased, the work also ceased. If this
rule were recast, and native churches made to depend
pecuniarily on themselves, there would, this experienced
missionary thinks, be a new order of things. The relations
between the European and native missionaries would be
diflferent when the latter were independent, and the people
who seek the priest's office, that they may eat a piece of
bread, would find other work. I heard many like expres-
sions of the same view. When the native churches can
cast away all claim to perpetual pecuniary help from Eng-
land, Christianity will have some chance of standing on its
merits. It will no longer be the faith of the conqueror. The
opinion that the native preacher is paid for doing England's
work will disappear. At present the non-proselytising
Hindoo can see no motive but a political one for the vast
outlay of money for missionaries. I cannot, in the limits
of this chapter, argue the question. I must simply
indicate the fact, which the mention of Mr Sheshadri
illustrates.

Journeying through the scenes of the liengal famine, 1
went from Soorey, in Beerbhoom, to the mountain home of
the Santals, where, about iioo feet above the sea, at a
place which has been named "Ebenezer," two friends, a
Norwegian and a Dane, have established an independ-
ent mission. The journey had to be made by palanquin.
The scenery was in many parts magnificent. Crossing a
rapid little river before day-dawn, we entered a labyrinth
of foliage so dense and varied, that in a square yard I
counted thii'teen different kinds of shrubs, the branches
and tendrils intertwined like a thick mat. Comfortable-
looking houses, embedded in little groves, and with cows,
pigs, goats, sheep, fowls, and even piles of firewood, indi-
cated a people and a climate very different from those of
Bengal In many cases the women were spinning at their
doors ; in few did they run away at the sight of the palki.
From tangled foliage we passed to a vast expanse of rice-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 177

fields, the "bunds" around which were the paths for the palki-
men, who moved in squares, on the ledges of fields covered
with water, above which the green paddy barely appeared.
A distant mountain was in this part the only landmark.
In about twenty-five miles we had almost every conceiv-
able variety of scenery ; at one time as of the Scotch moor ;
then the Yorkshire wold; then the Sussex downs, with
vast herds of cattle, sheep, and goats, feeding, under the
care of one or two persons, in solitude and peace.

Sixteen palki-men, some bearing, some running along-
side as relays, gave the variety of a monotonous song, to
the lowing of the herds, and the cries of the birds. From
the time a palki is lifted till it is set down again, the songs
never cease. Led by the men in front, the songs are the
guide of those behind. " Keep left," " Keep right," " Keep
straight," "Beware," and so on. Sometimes the leader
tells that " a flower," " a marigold " (a woman), is coming.
Then a song in her praise is extemporised amid general
laughter. Towards nightfall we arrived at a village with
all the characteristics of European civilisation. Mr Skref-
srud, the Norwegian missionary, was in England. Mr
Boerrison, the Dane, was at his post, and had been of
great use to the Government and the poor people during
the famine, though he made the inconvenient stipulation,
not safe as a future guide, that if he distributed the
" relief" — the rice — he must be allowed to preach and pray
with the people. About 1700 persons came in at the time
I was there, and, in several diflerent groups, attended so
many different — happily short — services. Then they had
their rice, Mr Boerrison was a trained engineer before he
was a missionary (as also, I think, was his friend), and the
famine work was well managed. Indeed the missionary was
a thoroughly devoted and capable man in every way ; doctor,
squire, lawgiver, lawyer, as well as pastor to his people,
and, above all, the director of the young, who went with
him in a drove for their morning and evening walk, laughing
and talking incessantly. Beads, tanks, and in one case a

M

178 ENGLISH RULE AND

small lake, had been made. At a cost of six shillings the
missionaries built a church which held 600 persons, and at
an estimated cost of fully fourteen shillings were build-
ing what Mr Boerrison called a cathedral, to hold locx)
persons. The walls were formed of posts, with twigs in-
tertwined between them, and the roof of like material;
all, in common with the labour, a free gift. Everything
seemed admirable, save the one fact that there had been a
great revival and many baptisms during the famine. I
would rather have heard of them at some other time,
considering that Mr Boerrison held the rice.

The two friends went out at first for a society; and
their "brethren" in India strove to separate them; but
they demurred. Finally they cut their tow-rope of the
society, and after diflBculties wliich would read like a
romance, founded the mission in Santalia. The land
belonged to seven Hindoo brothers, wlio raised obstacles
innumerable. At last on " one blessed night," by giving
baksheesh to a powerful headman, a paper was signed
securing to the missionaries twenty-five acres of land at
a yearly rental of £4, 8s., and on a lease of a hundred
years, with power of renewal Next morning the brotliers
wished to " do back ; " but already the missionaries were
on their way to Nya Doomka, to register their paper.
It was rather an odd proceeding — on the plan, perhaps, of
Jacob and Laban, or Jacob and Esau — but Mr Boerrison
saw only the good he and his friend intended, and sees
now only the good they have undoubtedly done. Land, of
course, they must have had in some way.

They planted and built ; stood between the people and
the money-lenders ; made their church the mother of other
churches, and their school the mother of other schools,
over a large district of Santalia A committee, which was
formed to raise money, visited the station at a cost of from
£30 to £40 a year. The missionaries dismissed the com-
mittee, surely one of the most daring steps ever taken;
and now they were independent. They give no money, but

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 179

lend without interest when they can. Genial and happy in
themselves and their people, the missionaries of Ebenezer
have certainly attained an almost unparalleled position.
The district is rich in soil and in minerals. The gardens are
ornamented with beautiful spar (iron, I think), and every-
thing betokens a much greater future. The story is at
least one of what may be done by individual manhood.

The American missionaries, too, have a noble history.
In Bombay they have, or rather a good man of their
nation has, a missionary newspaper ; in Lucknow they have
another. In Calcutta they have a most important Mission
Home, from which ladies go out to native houses (zenanas)
to teach, and one Miss Seelye, a physician, to heal the
sick, charging a fee of eight shillings a visit to the rich
and nothing to the poor. Close to the Home this noble
lady established a children's hospital, and with the other
ladies also superintended a foundling hospital, provided by
the municipality. Of the difl&culties and repulses of the
zenana teachers many curious stories might be told.

I met one day in Calcutta a native missionary, whose
w-ork, with a large congregation, was in the Sunderbunds,
where he seldom saw a European face. I met in the
thickest of the famine work with a missionary free-lance,
Mr Johnson (formerly, I believe, a military officer, and not
" reverend "), who in very truth held his life as if nothing
that he might obey God, and who rambled aU India
over, as he believed the Spirit of God called him. His
arm had on one journey (in company with Mr Boerrison)
been nipped off by a tiger. He had been apprehended
riding defiantly over the frontier (I think to the Afifreedes),
and had only been spared as a favour. The laws of men
were against him, but he read God's Law, and in a spirit ^
like American John Brown's, obeyed that. I saw him by .
the side of an Englishman who had been struck down by
heat in the famine district, and I know that that English-
man felt towards him with sincere gratitude. The sight '
of his face was in itself a security. I know not what

i8o ENGLISH RULE AND

Church he belongs to. I only know that he is a Christian ;
not rich ; not, I fear, a favourite among people who like
staid rules, but a man, nevertheless, of heroic mould.

On my way home the second time, I met a young
missionary, who convinced me that I had missed one of
the great sights of Agra, in missing the Army Temperance
work of the Rev. J. G. Gregson, a Baptist. Mr Gregson,
while, of course, preaching, has made this his special
work, and at this time could look — with joy, I am sure —
on six thousand pledged teetotallers in the British army
in India — a work of which his young assistant spoke, and
justly, with enthusiasm. Here are some instances among
many of self-denial in missions.

I saw much of two Baptist schools (the girls, about fifty,
boarding in the mission grounds), under the care of the
Eev. George Kerry and Mrs Kerry. The boarders were all
the children of professedly Christian parents, and the
condition of the school was that the whole of the pupils
should hear a portion of the Bible and a prayer daily,
morning and evening; nothing of a controversial kind,
however, being introduced into the prayer. The teachers
were in some cases Hindoo, in others Mohammedan, in
others, of course, Christian. I mentioned to Mr Kerry the
general reverential deportment, to which I only saw one
exception. He said : " Yes, and do you know those who
are not with us think they may somehow get good from
the worship of 'our* God? It is only to them like a
fetish, but it is that." There were six fine separate class-
rooms to Mr Kerry's school. The fees were from 6d. to
2s. a month; the Baptist mission contributing £150 to
the cost ; the Government nothing. I ought perhaps to say
(having referred to Mrs Sherring, Mrs Mitchell, and now
to Mrs Kerry) that a missionary's wife earns nothing, at
least by her mission work. She is expected to have
mastered the words, "And they shall be one flesh," and to
seek for no separate interest.

The bungalows of the girls, separated from the mission

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, i8i

house by a tank, perhaps sixty feet wide, are of course
secured from male intrusion, ladies alone having the
right to tread the private path. The plan is, that the
children dress and eat as in their villages, save that
cleanliness is strictly enjoined; and they manage their
own affairs. Their temper in school or at play seemed
imperturbable ; not merry, but a little dignified (it would
be a gross impropriety to lay a hand on the head of a
Hindoo girl of fourteen), perfect little ladies, yet very
bright and playful. Looking from the mission window I
saw them in little groups, bringing water, cooking, singing,
and so on. Presently a shower of rain began to fall First
they held up their faces to catch the welcome rain, then
they perceptibly shivered, cowered, and at last as with one
impulse ran indoors. I had seen them at their early
morning worship and lessons, and heard them singing
cheerily of the " Good Shepherd who knoweth His sheep,"
but I thought them after all prettiest at play. Mr Kerry
was proud to say that in a long experience he never had
beaten a boy, and of course the same applies to the girls.
The work is now under other management.

I have but one more instance of those I have selected
as illustrations, but it is one of the most significant. The
Rev. J. Long (of the Church Missionary Society, and
referred to elsewhere as the translator of " Nil Durpan ")
had an admirable system of fifteen village schools, with
800, in many cases Mussulman, pupils, to whom he taught
the Scriptures orally with illustrations drawn from emblems
and proverbs. The children committed to memory, in the
vernacular entirely, some small piece — " The old old story "
is an instance — and then began the use of the symbols and
proverbs ; by means of which also I believe Mr Long is
now engaged in illustrating the whole Bible or the New
Testament. In the same way he taught the ordinary
branches of elementary education, giving prizes to the
girls for cooking and house management. I never saw
these schools, but I have heard high praise given to them ;

1 82 ENGLISH RULE AND

and one proof of their efficiency is in the fact that the
system is being rapidly adopted all over India. Mr
Long's influence generally on Native India . has been
remarkable; and I think it is in a considerable measure
owing to his great tolerance and wise forbearance. It was
quite a common thing for liim to take a holiday at the
house — the English home for guests — of an accomplished
Hindoo landlord, and to use that gentleman's carriage to
and from church — the carriage of the worshipper of Doorga
waiting for the servant of Christ ; and I know that when
the missionary left India, his friend, thoroughly Hindoo,
pressed him to return, if possible, as his guest — that is, at
the generous Hindoo's cost, from and to Charing Cross. This
does not look as if missionaries with common sense were
viewed with dislike in India.

Of the Church of England generally in India, I should
,say, and say unhesitatingly, that all State support to it
ought to be peremptorily withdrawn, and, at the same
time,' r think that the withdrawal might in many cases be
a loss to India. No faith, as a faith, ought to be supported
from the taxes of India, or assuredly ought not, unless the
Hindoo temple and the Mohammedan mosque were so sup-
ported. At the same time, the chaplains have often held
the even balance against the missionaries. The feeling be-
tween the two bodies has not always been an amicable one,
but to the chaplain, the Anglo-Indian, and, indeed, also
the native communities, have owed certain characteristics
not to be disregarded. No religious service in India is more
solemnising than that which may be found in some of
those beautiful cantonment churches which stud the land.
Let the State aid, however, be withdrawn, and the chaplain
placed on the same footing as the, missionary, and the
Church of England would have found a higher ground of
usefulness.

An attempt, made at Simla, to set on foot Union Churches,
was not, I think, received with general approval. Tliere
was, and I suppose is, in Edinburgh, an "Anglo-Indian

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA . 183

Christian Union ; " and the new Church in India, though
not, it was said, connected with that Union, selected from
it the minister for the first of its churches at Simla,
and the forms of worship were essentially Presbyterian.
There was nothing in any way improper in this, but it
could hardly be wondered at if English churchmen stood
aloof from tlie proposal, or if Independents and Baptists
preferred their congregational independence to union. To
a limited extent the project will succeed and prove a good.
I do not think that it can do so generally. The powerful
individuality of Dr Duff, yet standing out like a great rock
in the weary land of India, is an example in mission
work. A man to whom all subjects are God's subjects,
and all humanity God's property, will desire as few restric-
tions as possible on his efforts. Still the idea of union was
pleasant to many people who yearned to see an end to
Christian bickerings in a land where every difference is
magnified. A man of a serious turn of mind, who goes
from a discussion as to dipping or sprinkling in baptism,
to where he sees Paine's "Age of Eeason, price eight annas "
(a shilling), may well long for some means of peace.

The outcry against " the godless education " of the State
colleges is to my view both a wicked and a senseless out-
cry. The State colleges are England's simple duty to
India, and will tend to India's well-being in a grand sense.
The mission colleges, however, have duties all their own,
and no one who believes in Christianity as a missionary
faith would say them nay, so long as they pay for what
they provide, and do not seek money from the hard-wrung
taxes of India. I have heard it said that the aim ought to
be the poor to whom Christ appealed, and that therefore
preaching and not school teaching is the true object of the
missionary. This is simply an error. The Jesuits both
preach and teach, knowing that a man works better with
two hands than with one ; and I never saw a missionary yet
who did not rejoice to win a Brahmin. I have heard it
said also, by vulgar people, that the missionary in India

1 84 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA .

is a man who could not " get on " in England. The truth
is, that the missionary in India is often the one man in a
district who is independent of all control, and who can
stand for the poor in their need ; and when, as sometimes
occurs, he is not merely like a hero, but also is one, he has
in his hands a power which the heads of armies cannot in
a just cause withstand. A man like Mr Sherring, a loyal
and ardent supporter of good government, is a safeguard
against bad government, go where he may, and is a positive
gain, not merely to the work of missions, but to English
rule in India, and to the cause of the poor and helpless in
far more than the district in which his work for the time
more directly lies.

CHAPTER XVI.

LORD MAYORS LAST TOUR — LORD NORTHBROOK —

IRRIGATION AND TRADE.

Some important questions were pending, but none were
markedly pressing for settlement, when early in the year
1872, Lord Mayo, accompanied by Lady Mayo and a few
friends and officers iti charge of departments, embarked
in Admiral Cockburn's flag-ship, the ** Glasgow," for a tour
in Burma and the Andamans. A minute and circumstan-
tial plan provided for quite an array of doings, from the
landing in Eangoon till the final departure from Port
Blair. Lord Mayo's mind was at this time comparatively
at ease, and the omens seemed propitious for a more than
ordinarily pleasant and useful tour. He had a short time
previously reviewed, with interest and indeed delight.
Lord Napier's fine army at the Delhi camp, and had been
heartily received on all hands. A little later he had wel-
comed the young King of Siam in public durbar. The
Looshai expedition was progressing with the completeness
that characterised all the plans of the commander-in-chief.
And finally, Lord Mayo, in a personal sense, had been
especially gratified by many marked expressions of feeling
from Hindoos, Mohammedans, Parsees, and Jews, as well
as Christians, on the recovery of the Prince of Wales.

In a little time telegrams began to arrive, telling of
meetings here and there in Burma ; of merchants pleading
for standard measures, for extension to Burma of the
Bengal Contract Law, for a Bankruptcy Act, for railway
extension ; of natives of Burma avowing their loyalty and
stating their grievances; and, amid all, of the festivi-

186 ENGLISH RULE AND

ties of a vice-regal tour. Then the telegrams ceased ; the
Viceroy had departed for the Andamans.

Three months previously, but with no view to this tour,
I had received from a gentleman, and sent to England,
some very good pictures of those convict islands. The
story, at the time it appeared, read like that of a different
planet. It pictured a group of four greater and a number
of smaller islands, cut ofl*, in a double sense, from all
human kind, in the vast solitude of the Bay of Bengal ;
a native population of io,cxx) naked savages, needing
protection from an equal population of, in some cases,
much worse savages sent there by the Indian Govern-
ment; a fine climate with cool sea breezes; landscapes
of hill and dale covered with rich tropical vegetation to
the very water's edge ; varied natural productions for man
and beast, including many of the fruits of Europe, natural-
ised with great pains; bazaars in which ticket-of-leave
men and women sold, and in many cases produced, what
officers and men, military and police, required ; European
quarters with church and mess-rooms; convict quarters,
in long barracks, each for one hundred men ; a picture
altogether curious when given in full ; not, I fear, so sug-
gestive in this necessarily brief outline.

Port Blair was described as situated on the southern
island, with a fine harbour and anchorage, and at the
mouth of an inlet, with Eoss Island, Chatham Island, and
Viper Island, all within easy distances. On Blair and
Koss Islands there w^ere said to be about 10,000 convicts,
of whom 950 were females ; and Viper Island was marked
as the punishment station, with chain gangs and other
severe kinds of labour. Of the charms of scenery, no lan-
guage was held to convey the full fact ; and photographs,
taken for a melancholy purpose a little later, go far to
show that the word-pictures were not overdrawn. It was to
these beautiful prison islands that the " Glasgow," attended
by two other vessels, was bound when the telegrams from
Burma to India ceased to record the doings of Lord Mayo.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 187

On the evening of the 12th February, there were
whispers through Calcutta and the neighbourhood, that
some dreadful thing had happened at the Andamans.
Major Burke, brother of the Viceroy, had, it was said,
received astounding telegrams in cipher, and Mr Robert
Burke, now Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and then
on his way from Calcutta to Bombay for England, had
been telegraphed to return. A few hours set the sad
rumours at rest, with the sad reality ; the Viceroy had been
murdered at Port Blair. People had been prepared for
anything but this. While Lord Mayo was in Calcutta,
and with his strange, but rooted, and, in fact, ungovernable,
dislike to being surrounded by guards or police, nothing,
after Mr Norman's death, would have greatly surprised
Anglo-Indians. But to be struck down amid English
sailors, close to " our own element," and in sight of the
admiral's flag-ship, appeared to bewilder every one, and for
a time to dominate eveiy other feeling.

The mournful facts were stated circumstantially in the
ofl&cial gazette, and by eye-witnesses. The vessels arrived
at Port Blair at half-past nine on the morning of February
8th, and between eleven and twelve o'clock the Viceroy,
accompanied by his private secretary, his personal staff, and
several officers, including the superintendent of the station,
landed on Eoss Island, where the barracks and other
buildings were visited. They then went to Viper Island,
and here, as the punishment settlement, additional care
was taken to keep the convicts at a distance. From Viper
Island they went to Chatham Island. At five o'clock in
the evening the work of the day was done, according to the
programme. Lord Mayo, however, wished for a little more
— wished particularly to see the sun set from Mount
Harriet, behind Hope Town, Port Blair; and one more
beautiful sunset was in God's mercy granted to him.

The party arrived at Hope Town at half-past five, and a
body of police was moved as speedily as possible from
Chatham Island, to serve as escort The mountain was

i88 ENGLISH RULE AND

climbed and descended in playful good humour. The sun
had been seen to set, and no one suspected how very nearly
a human life was to the great final setting. Some ticket-of-
leave men approaching with a petition were ordered to send
their petition in another way. By the time the pier or jetty
had been reached for the return to the " Glasgow," it was
quite dark, and the way was shown by torch-light. Lord
Mayo had walked about twenty yards on the pier, the
superintendent turning to give some order, the oflBcers
generally, perhaps, now less careful, with English sailors so
near at hand, when a man dashed forward from the shore,
and knocking one or two people aside, stabbed the Viceroy
twice, above the one shoulder and below the other. It
was all over, and as certainly as if it had been done with a
battery of guns. The assassin was seized. The Viceroy
either fell or leaped into the water ; no one in the dark-
ness and confusion could say which. He simply said,
according to the hearing of his private secretary, " Bume,
they've hit me ; " and they were the last and only words of
Lord Mayo. He was carried to the launch, which was
at once put off from shore, but it is not quite certain
that even then he was alive. Before the " Glasgow " was
reached (Lady Mayo watching therefrom the approach of
the launch) he was quite dead.

The murderer, a man named Shere Ali, about twenty-nine
years of age, and from the neighbourhood of the Khyber
Pass, had been transported for what he had called a family
feud (vendetta), and the Commissioner of Peshawur, murder.
He had previously been a soldier of the Indian Govern-
ment, and was remembered by some of his oflBcers as a
well-behaved man. At the Andamans his conduct had
been reported "fair," and he was then a ticket-of-leave
man, earning his living as a barber in Hope Town. He
confessed the murder, said he did it by God's order, and
that he had no accomplices. Nothing more was elicited.
He was tried and executed. Such in bare terms is the
story of Lord Mayo's last tour. The motive for the murder

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 189

will probably never be known ; there was nothing, as in
the case of Mr Norman, to cause suspicion that any act of
Lord Mayo had led to it, or to connect Shere Ali with any
body of conspirators. There were rumours of a message
having been sent to the Audamans, and of much besides ;
but nothing arose to show that the rumours rested on any
figment of truth. The most general opinion was that the
man had acted merely under a poignant sense of what he
deemed his own wrongs. It was a strange end for Lord
Mayo. The memory of his light-hearted earlier days came,
it is said, to some minds in India, as it was destined to
come to many more in England ; and this scene on the
jetty, and amid the shallow water, under the dark foliage
of Hope Town, far south in the Bay of Bengal, was a great
mystery, before which serious men, for the moment at
least, bowed.

On the 1 6th February the "Glasgow" gave up her charge at
the mouth of the Hooghly to a smaller vessel, the "Daphne."
On the 17th the body was landed at a ghd^t some distance
below Calcutta on the river, and placed on a gun-carriage,
and covered with the union jack. A procession of judges,
native princes, merchants, clergy, and all manner of orders
of men, had been arranged, and marshalled on the line of
route, from the gh4t to Fort William, falling into rank,
line after line, as the gun-carriage passed. The road —
which lay along the great plain, the Maidan, with the
river on the one hand and the palaces of fashionable Chow-
inghee on the other. Fort William looming darkly in front —
was lined the whole length with English and Native
troops, so arranged that an English regiment on the one
side faced a Native regiment on the other. On the river
the ships were in mourning, and the yards and rigging
manned, though on no uniform rule. The plain, a mile
and a half wide, and in length from Fort William almost
to Alipore, the lieutenant governor's house, was like a
sea of faces, quiet, impassive, undemonstrative. The
minute-guns from a battery of Eoyal Artillery at the land-

I90 ENGLISH RULE AND

ing ghd.t, were, as it seemed, replied to from Fort William,
and echoed from the "Daphne" and from a Siamese man-of-
war, in never-ceasing dull leaden roar. The Viceroy*s body-
guard, and bodies of Bengal cavalry and Calcutta volunteers,
with chaplains and others, preceded the coffin, which was
followed by the Viceroy's brothers, his little boy, about
seven years old, and apparently bewildered with the
strange scene, and his private secretary, who had also
been his friend. Then came the acting Governor General,
Mr Strachey, the lieutenant governor, the commander-in-
cliief, the Bishop of Calcutta, Bishop Milman, Archbishop
Steins, Boman Catholic, and all the varied orders of
persons, including a fine body of sailors, to whom places
had been assigned. As the body passed, and the people
fell into line, small detachments of Bengal cavalry rode
up on each side; a strong body of the same cavalry also
bringing up the rear. Regimental bands timed the slow
order of the procession with a funeral march. An English-
man would have been very phlegmatic if, even in the
general moumfulness, he had lost sight of the significance
of that grand display of calm strength, or of the facility
with which the vacant high place had been filled.

Leaving the open ground, the houses in mourning gave
a new direction to the thoughts; it was a change from the
grandeur to the privacy of a great common feeling, which,
whatever it was not, was exceedingly solemnising. The
coffin was taken into the grounds of Government House,
by what is known as the North West Gate, and placed at
the foot of the Grand Stair, the chief mourners standing
by, while the procession filed slowly out at the opposite
gateway. It was Saturday evening, and very nearly dark.
The huge building loomed gloomily over the body of the
Viceroy and the few mourners who remained with it,
while the last of the long file of people passed into the
densely-crowded, and now lit-up street. The coffin was
then carried into the great festive room, where, as yester-
day, Lord Mayo had received the King of Siam ; and there,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 191

covered with the union jack, the orders of nobility, and a
few simple but more voiceful wreaths of flowers, it re-
mained till Wednesday, when the funeral service was read
by the Bishop of Calcutta, and the funeral anthems and
hymns were sung by a fine choir. Then the body was
borne away once more to the " Glasgow " to be conveyed
to Ireland; and India saw the last of its great-hearted
Viceroy.

I have said in an earlier chapter that I am not attempt-
ing to claim for Lord Mayo a place in the front rank of
statesmen. If I did so I am satisfied that history would
not allow the claim. But I say again that his healthy
mind, in a healthy body, made his work light, and reduced
great difficulties, till what might have appeared a moun-
tain become as a mole-hilL He was essentially a loyal
man — to his friends, his sovereign, and his country; and
I have been told that no one had a more reverential and
child-like sense of the deeper dependence upon God.

Lord Napier and Ettrick, Governor of Madras, held the
vice-royalty from the end of February till the middle of
May, when Lord Northbrook arrived. The re-hoisting of
the flag, however, at Government House, was anything but
a token that the current of official life had returned to its
accustomed channels. There was a marked changa The
guards were now European, and precautions hitherto un-
dreamt of were taken to prevent the possibility of a sur-
prise ; a curious instance of what a day may bring forth in
India. The first impression Lord Northbrook made on
Native India was, that he would be excessively reserved.
Before he left Calcutta he had convinced the people of the
sincerity of his aims, and they forgave the reserve. In a
speech soon after his arrival, he declared his determination
to curtail expenditure, so that it might come \dthin reason-
able income, and in all changes of policy to proceed with
caution, and a regard for the feelings of the people con-
cerned. He abolished the income tax. To one of Sir
George Campbell's favourite measures he opposed a veto,

192 ENGLISH RULE AND

which was more than the veto of one measure, for it
warned the lieutenant governor of what a veto might
imply.

When the famine seemed imminent, the Viceroy and
the lieutenant governor were at opposite poles of thought,
and I think Sir George Campbell was fundamentally right.
A number of persons (including, unfortunately for the posi-
tion, some grain merchants) suggested the closing of the
ports, so far as the export of grain was concerned. Sir
George Campbell partly took this view, but with quite a
diflferent scope. He suggested, I believe, as did most per-
sons of reasonable views in England, not that the ports
should be closed, but simply that means should be taken
to prevent the grain from being carried away at a time
when it was needed. That is, that the grain might
be purchased in Backergunge, the great rice -growing
country, or elsewhere, and the carriage saved ; while the
purchase, if made early, might be at a comparatively low
price. Lord Northbrook believed that his appearance in
the market as a buyer would be to play into the hands of
the rice merchants, some of whom, there was reason to
suppose, had laid up large stocks of grain. He sent,
therefore, as we have seen, to Burma and elsewhere,
bought at a still higher rate, but left the trade free. I
believe Sir George Campbell right, for these reasons : First,
I do not think that, if a merchant, foreseeing a famine and
venturing to act upon his perception, bought up grain to sell
at a future market rate, he was doing anything immoral. The
action would be in his own direct line of business, and alto-
gether diiferent from a body of planters buying up or leas-
ing all the means of carriage in a famine district that they
might sub-lease it to the Government at an immense profit.
Secondly, if the Government had appeared in the grain
market up-country, the merchants who had been storing
grain in Calcutta would have lost their vantage ground,
and might have been compelled to sell. Thirdly, as stated
elsewhere, Lord Northbrook's purchases — privately made

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 193

in Bunna—^jould not have been so made if the famine had
continued another year. As it was, strange scenes met one
in the famine district ; hosts of vessels going up and down
the Ganges, exporting and importing grain at the same time;
grain arriving to where grain in vast quantities was abeady
stored. Several methods were suggested, by perfectly im-
partial men, as means whereby, without closing the ports,
the good Bengal rice might have been kept in India.
Lord Northbrook's refusal to leave Calcutta during the hot
season, and his anxious and unremitting labour to beat
down the famine and save the treasury, while at the same
time he matured a scheme, or rather schemes, of irrigation,
deserve higher praise than they have obtained.

To Lord Dalhousie belongs the credit of initiating our
English system of utilising native methods, supplemented by
newer and more scientific means of irrigation ; and if Lord
Dalhousie had been Emperor of all India, with power in
perpetuity, we should probably not now have had so dread-
ful a prospect in Madras. To Lord Lawrence, however,
assisted by the clear initial policy of Lord Salisbury, we
owe the practical development of the idea. During the
rule of Lord Lawrence, not a part of India, or any peculiar-
ity of India, escaped notice, when the Governor General was
forming his vast and beneficent plans for irrigation. Lqrd
Mayo continued the work, but less decisively, in view of his
financial difficulties. Lord Northbrook made the subject
his own on sound principles, and with a tact and consider-
ateness for native views, habits, and even prejudices, which,
if his rule had continued, would have borne all before it,
and made irrigation to represent one of the greatest vic-
tories of England in India.

He recognised the fact that compulsory irrigation may be

a great hardship in districts which from local peculiarities

never lack water ; and he knew, as some men do not, that

public spirit, and the sacrifice of private to public interests,

must generally depend on education. He saw a vast empire

in which the districts differed, at clearly marked stages, from

N

194 ENGUSH RULE AND

the thin end of the wedge at Comorin to the thick end at
the Himalayas, and from Burma to Bombay. To people
who said in effect, " Irrigation is good, but as you do not
carry coals to Newcastle, pray also forbear to bring water
to where we have enough," he replied, in effect, "What
you say is reasonable ; show us the exact fact." He saw in
India that the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Brahmapootra,
had a way in the rains, not merely of turning dry courses, not
marked on any maps, into navigable rivulets, but of sub-
merging whole districts, so that over many miles of culti-
vated land the people paddled their canoes. To store this
water was one problem. He saw in the south a vast tank
system of irrigation. He saw a little higher, and indeed
all along, in parts, the Madras system, formed by intercept-
ing and damming off the waters of the Kistna and the
Qodavery on their way to the ocean, and spreading over the
country many smaU channels, in the form of a life-giving
fan ; a system carried out also northward, from the Soane
and other canals. He saw in the Punjab an excellent
system of well irrigation, the wells studding the country
like forest trees; in Bombay, inundation canals, which
received and stored the waters in times of flood. On the
data supplied by a good irrigation map and the administra-
tive reports, a story different from any yet told might be
written of Indian irrigation ; of what has been done, and
what must be done if England would justify her rule by
her care for the true interests of the people.

One glance at an irrigation map is sufficient to show
how little has been done. The bright spots are numerous,
but the darkness is vast, and, under certain conditions,
means death. Yet you cannot say where irrigation be-
gins, or where it ends. A public-spirited landlord will
sometimes do much good never heard of by anybody out
of his immediate neighbourhood. This kind of religious
benevolence is much commoner than many Englishmen
imagine. Above all, it is impossible to say where the
power to irrigate ends. On those streams to which I have

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 195

referred as not even marked on the maps, or, in fact,
existent in dry weather, you may sail for miles and miles
in diverging lines, learning what an immense security
nature has given India against famine and drought. But
will irrigation prove remunerative, or even pay its own ex-
penses ? In some cases it will do so ; in some it will not ;
but it may be as necessary in the one case as the other,
and ought to be so viewed by statesmen. In the sense of
utilising all that was good in native irrigation, and extend-
ing the system of irrigation gradually but unremittingly,
no ruler India ever had would, I think, have achieved
greater and more enduring results than Lord Northbrook.

One other subject Lord Northbrook, almost beyond any
other Governor General, might have been expected to
equally make his own, but which I think he did not.
I mean the development of Indian trade and trades. The
impression existed, correctly or incorrectly — and impression
is much in India — that as Viceroy he cared little com-
paratively about restoring the old trade routes to Western
China and Kashgaria; that, in fact. Lord Mayors policy
with respect to them was abandoned. To Indian trade, by
river and railway, as well as outward, I should say Lord
Northbrook did give much attention, but I cannot see
from it much sensible result. Look, as an example, to the
Ganges for what this river trade means.

In 1 87 1 the Indian Government requested Sir George
Campbell to select some point on this river at which to
register the trade. He selected Sahibgunge — perhaps as
good a place as he could have had for noting the long
distance boats and cargoes both of the up and down trades,
though no point was of the least use for those lesser dis-
tances, either up or down, which stopped short of the
place of registry. In the first six months more than
18,000 boats passed Sahibgvmge — boats in size from the
Dacca " pulwar," from sixty to seventy-five feet long and
drawing six feet of water (for sea as well as river voyages),
to the flat-bottomed boat from the upper provinces. The

196 ENGLISH RULE AND

cargoes downward were such commodities as wheat, grain,
sugar, oil-seeds, hides and horns, tobacco, timber, and
saltpetre. The wheat was generally shipped as low on the
river as Monghyr; the sugar in the Benares part of the
North Western Provinces, and tobacco in Tirhoot. The
markets were found all the way down the river to Calcutta,
which itself, however, had fully half of the total traffic.
Up stream, rice, metal goods, and other articles of foreign
production, were carried. I have myself watched all night
through the boats passing in shoals, faster than one could
count them, to and from Calcutta, the dismal songs of the
boatmen sounding, especially in the rains, like echoes from
eternity. The true fact of the Ganges may be seen more
clearly in the next chapter.

Who can say what it is that governs the India trade ?
One year there is not an Arab dhow on the Hooghly.
Next year there are thirty. Why is it ? I asked a gentle-
man of great experience. He knew no more, he said, of
the mainsprings of that trade than he knew of the man in
the moon. Each officer knows his own district, and some-
body is presumed to have the skill to put all the reports
properly into one; but the broad general fact is little known.
Indeed, we know very little even of the laws that govern the
Cape and Canal routes to Europe, though we perceive that
the latter certainly has not rendered the former obsolete.
Merchants, who buy " on delivery," prefer the storage on
sea to warehousing on land ; and from various causes the
Cape vessels increase in number.

Passing to European trade, what do we find in India ? I
made a point of seeing or learning the facts of all works
from about ten miles below to about thirty above Calcutta.
I found fifteen great factories, established within ten years,
between Budge Budge and Chinsurah, for cotton or jute.
Opposite Calcutta there were American and Scotch firms
transforming Seebpoor. At Eishra, near Serampore, near the
old house of Warren Hastings, is a jute mill. Where " Carey,
Marshman, and Ward" made their famous Serampore paper,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 197

a fine jute mill is yearly extending its boundaries and its
trade. Where rum was made of old at Goripore, for the
Australian gold fields, jute is now manufactured. At
Titighur, where Lord Combennere* rested from his toils,
there is now a cotton mill ; and where Sir Lawrence Peel
had his house at Budge Budge there is a factory for jute.
Garden Eeach, half " spoiled " by the steamboat companies
and the King of Oude, is to be wholly spoiled by mills and
factories. English, American, Armenian, and Jew, run
the race of this new competition. I could easily refer to
many more instances. Are the mills an evil to India?
People who say so can have little care for the general in-
terests of mankind. There are, Lord Shaftesbury said, when
these notes were being written, in the Bombay Presidency
405,000 spindles, 4500 power looms, and 10,000 hands,
turning out daily 100,000 lbs. of yarn. Lord Salisbury, on
later data, stated the number of spindles at 600,000, with
"at least half a million more approaching completion."
Lord Shaftesbury would enforce in these mills the observ-
ance of Sunday. Lord Salisbury would not; and Lord
Salisbury is right, considering the creeds of the workers ;
though the English mill-owner who keeps his mill work-
ing on Sunday has little claim to the sympathies of Eng-
lishmen. I saw much of the working of the jute mill
at Serampore; of the willing docile workers, and the
value of their work ; and I sincerely trust no body of men
in England, nor any interest in England, will be suffered
to interpose to fetter these new impulses of trade.

The men of Manchester, however, are determined to
have, at least, Manchester goods admitted free, before
India advances to the manufacture of the finer goods. One
speaker in the House of Commons distinctly said so in
exact words, on that memorable occasion, this very year,
when the members for Lancashire went in a body. Con-
servative and Eadical alike, to demand the repeal of the
5 per cent, duty on cotton goods imported into India.
Tht Times reminded Manchester, sarcastically, of this

198 ENGLISH RULE AND

general agreement, and of the fact that when any great
Indian questions concerning only the interests of India
are before the House, the members for Lancashire are too
often conspicuous by their absence. Sir George Campbell
and Sir George Balfour represented India in the debate.
Manchester was simply impetuous — for itself. I do not
say that Manchester is characterised by selfishness. Its
public and private spirit would give the lie to any such
charge ; but assuredly it is in error. It is the duty of the
House of Commons to legislate for India from an Indian,
not an English, stand-ground, and with a view, first of all,
to the interests of India.

Some little time ago there appeared in Mooherjee^s (Cal-
cutta) Magazine a plaintive lament over the decay of
Indian trades ; the muslins, the shawls, the carved work
— the cunning workmanship of a hundred names. It is an
article that reads like a wail; and the writer (probably
the editor, but I do not know) points the whole by the
fact that while India is poor, and paying enormously for
money on loan, England is receiving the money that
might redeem the difficulties of India, and convert its
poverty into wealth. Is there nothing in this ? Sir
George Campbell says there is, as we have seen in another
chapter. English enterprise is doing much. The mines of
Eaneegunge (native, in the first instance) are being vastly
extended ; and much enterprise of other names is tending
to like results.

Still India is poor ; very poor ; deplorably poor. Still,
also, there are Englishmen who talk of "rights of con-
quest," and like foolish and wicked claims, which ought to
be cast aside, before they cast us and our rule aside as
worthless in the day of first principles. We have no rights
of conquest wliich are not rights of justice. We won
India partly by the strong arm, partly by strong sense,
partly by inducing the people to believe us. I believe
with Colonel Chesney,^ that English government, in any

' " Indian Polity."

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 199

case, in India is a great improvement on Native govern-
ment, but it is still foreign government, and if it claim to
stand on rights of conquest it will go down as certainly as
it ever arose ; and the fall will be terrible.

I wish Lord Northbrook had given more attention
to developing the resources — not State, but popular re-
sources — of India. I wish now that Lord Lytton may see
the way to do so. Lord Northbrook did a great thing,
much condemned, when he tried the Guikwar of Baroda
publicly; and he did more than that. He could not, the
Hindoo Patriot said, be "considered a brilliant ruler,"
for "he made no war, annexed no territory, broke no
pledge, committed no plunder *' — keen satire surely — but
*' he gave the land rest." Lord Lytton may accomplish
what Lord Northbrook missed. He has had the " tamasha "
of " the Empress " at Delhi He has had more. He has
already conciliated the people, who saw little to praise in
the tamasha ; and he may do them inmiense good. He has
power, as an English noble, which no Anglo-Indian official
could have if raised to the supreme rule. Supported by a
strong party at home, and with the great fact in his favour
that the Conservative in England may be, and often is, the
truest Liberal as regards India ; with the fact also in his
favour, that he stands above aU Anglo-Indian cliques and
special interests, I know not what Lord Lytton may not
do of beneficial work before his rule passes into history.
Dangers in Cabul mean much; but India must be defended
within the frontiers, by India being made to rest secure,
not merely in just laws, but in material prosperity. If
good government does not consist so much in perfect
theories as in practical results, then India, having none of
the perfect theories of government to fall back upon, and
actually claiming few of them, has a more than ordinary
claim to the practical results which she in common with
all Eastern nations does claim. She is told that she can-
not have European political freedom. Her reply, not
always articulate, but generally very real, is a claim to bo

300 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

well and justly governed, not morely as to laws between
man and man — the work of jurists, but aa to development
of national life, and her power to live — the work of states-
men. To some of the features of this claim I shall ask the
reader's attention later. In referring, however, to the past
work of Lord Mayo and Lord Northbrook, and to the
existing work of Lord Lytton, I know of no fact that is
better worth deepening than that of the reality of Native
Opinion in India. No ruler — not even Akbar, or Bunjeet
Singh, or Dost Mohammed — could rule without making
the interests of the people a primary consideration. All
great rulers have known that the condition of arbitrary
power is awful responsibility, and that responsibility is
exceedingly awful when the arbitrary power is wielded by
a nation that has won for itself freedom. If Lord Lytton
should succeed in ruling well, Lord Beaconsheld will have
made another happy appointment He made a noble one
in that of Lord Maya

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FAMINE OF 1 874 IN BENGAL.

If the proceedings ia relation to the Bengal 'famine had
formed an isolated fact in Indian history, they might
have been referred to now as illustrations of that history
simply, and the story might have been read for its in-
terest When, however, we think of the dread famines
in Orissa, in the Native States of Bajpootana, and in
Persia, and when we see the whole fearful facts brought
once more before us by the famine of this year in Madras,
there is no temptation to attempt word-pictures; and I
should be ashamed if I made the attempt. In the
famine in Orissa not fewer than a million of people
perished — ^people whom, when the season turned against
us, we could not reach with the food that we at last had
obtained. From three to four thousand orphans were left
to be provided for. The number of deaths in Eajpootana
would not, it is supposed, be fewer than 1,625,000. The
people fled in hosts from their homes, over the parched,
stony high land, towards British territory, and dropping,
score by score, and hundred by hundred, became food for
the beasts of prey that followed, and for the birds of prey
that hovered overhead. This, the reader will observe, is
no attempt to produce a word-picture. It is the bare
general outline of a picture, already drawn by many hands,
but never sufficiently known to Englishmen.^ Of the
famine in Persia we learned less, though we had enough, in
reliable statements, to make the blood curdle. The author
of a work which had no relation to the famine — a very
graphic journal — " From the Indus to the Tigris," wrote :

202 ENGUSH RULE AND

"In our march from Obayn to the Persian capital, we hardly saw
any infants or very young children. They had nearly all died. We
nowhere heard the sound of music nor song nor mirth in all the
journey up to Mashluul. We passed through village after village,
each almost concealed from view in the untrimmed foliage of its
gardens, only to see repetitions of misery, melancholy, and despair.
The suffering produced by this- famine baffles description, and exceeds
our untutored conceptions. In this single province of Khorassan the
loss of population is estimated at 120,000, and over the whole king-
dom cannot be less than a million and a half. ... On our way
through the city (Teheran) we saw beggars, squalid and famished, in
every street, appealing pitifully to passers by for charity. The
official returns for the week represent the daily mortality within the
city walls at 200, almost wholly victims to starvation and typhoid
fever. Thousands of families, who have hitherto kept body and soul
together by the sale of their jewellery and property, down to the
clothes on their back, are now reduced to a state of utter destitution.
At Mila Qird we saw men desponding, bowed, and paralysed by
want ; women nude in their rags, with matted hair and shrivelled
features, wandering restlessly like witches ; naked children, with deep*
sunk eyes, and an unmeaning stare as we disturbed them at their
morning meal of wild seeds and unripe ears of com."

The Bengal famine was a break, in the cause of
humanity, of a long dismal line of history. It was an
attempt to save the lives of the poor people of Bengal ;
and if I appear in this chapter to step out of my way, to
lay before the reader any mere views of scenery or of life, I
beg that it may be imputed to a desire to illustrate useful
facts, and not to any unhealthy craving to connect the
sufferings of humanity with the vanity of a writer. "We
made errors witli respect to the Bengal famine ; but the
greatest error of all would be to miss the moral, either of
our failures or our success, as a guide to action in these
and future times.

Of the many contradictory views as to what was done,
and what ought to have been, or might have been, done, it
is only necessary to say that men of differently constituted
minds, and occupying difiFerent stand-grounds, saw the
general fact in different lights. On my first landing in
Bombay, I found a number of letters awaiting me from

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 203

friends, Native and European (letters conveying opinions
for which I had written from England), but no two letters
represented the same view. In extending my inquiries
orally in Bombay, I met one gentleman, high in official
life, who assured me, from " personal knowledge," that the
rumoured differences of the Viceroy and Sir George Camp-
bell were mere imagination, save in the single instance of
the prohibition or non-prohibition of food exporta I
met another gentleman who assured me, also on personal
knowledge, that Lord Northbrook's course had been char-
acterised almost by genius, and Sir George Campbell's by
blind obstinacy. I met a third who maintained that Lord
Northbrook had held out for three months against posi-
tive evidence, and either could not see the danger — which
spoke little for his clearness of vision — or supposed that the
occasion was not one for administrative action — which spoke
little for his humanity. Views equally conflicting pre^
vailed from the western sea-board of India to the eastern
limits of Bengal ; and, of course, facts even in the case of
honest men were unwittingly distorted by the colour of
extreme views.

Calcutta was preparing for an unusually gay season,
when the cool weather came ; and, upon the whole, had no
faith in the existence of the famine. Operas, a new
theatre, a circus, among other amusements, were in view.
Boxes at the Italian opera cost from £1 10 to £140 for the
season. Nothing was commoner than the sarcastic ques-
tion, "Ah! going on a voyage of discovery to find the
famine?" Lord Northbrook, meanwhile, over-weighted
with anxiety, was watching from Calcutta for the signs of
fresh danger, or relief. Sir George Campbell had broken
down in health ; Sir Eichard Temple, who had gone out to
the famine district a sceptic, had, on seeing for himself,
avowed a startling change of opinion ; had demanded in-
creased powers, and had organised a system of relief which
in the end was censured chiefly for its over-completeness.

The ports of the Ganges from whence the famine opera-

204 ENGUSH RULE AND

tions were directed, from Monghyr downward to Patna
upward, may be said, generally, to run from west to east.
On the south side the East India Railway has a station at
Barr, from whence a steamboat plied, with flats of corn, to
a place called Chumpta Gh&t, on the opposite side of the
river. From Chumpta Gh&t the famous light railway
had been made, at the rate of a mile a day, by Sikh
Pioneers (the Muzzbee Sikhs), to Durbunga, about fifty
miles distant, and about fifty more, as the crow flies, from
the Terai of Nepal Sir Richard Temple had fixed his
headquarters at Monghyr ; but it was difiBcult to say where
he was, or where he was not, while danger threatened or
work was possible.

At Barr I found piles of grain and fodder, and a steamer,
with her steam up, and her flats alongside, but the life of
action had gone. The rains had come — those tremendous
rains which in a few days plough the earth into deep
gullies, and give to the rivers a volume and velocity which
no masonry can resist. After some hours, however, the
boat started. Then the railway had gone — miles of it
carried away, and the ground left as if no railway had ever
been. By trolly, where a bit of the line was left, and on
foot where it had gone, the journey to Durbunga was made
in fifty-six hours without any stoppage, save for the trans-
fer of the trolly from one bit of line to another. The ap-
pearance of a number of famine parties, struggling through
the mud, with bullocks or ponies, was dismal.

Durbunga was like a great camp, in which a cheerful
view of affairs was the exception. The Muzzbee Sikhs
had been brought down for three months, and were likely
to be detained from their homes for a long period — pro-
bably a year longer. They certainly were not in the live-
liest of spirits, while every hour brought in fresh parties
of English officers and men, from all parts of the famine
district, for refuge from the rains, and to add to the stories
of undue expenditure ; of contracts which had thrown great
sums of money into the hands of planters and others, the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 205

owners or lessees of carriage ; of fodder, which one could
see piled up by the Way-side, rotted and spoiled. It was a
time to claim an Englishman's right to grumble ; but I met
with no Englishman who grudged any labour or endurance
that had preserved life. " "We saved grain and fodder too,"
they said, "when we could, and mortal men could not
have done more." This was somewhat different from the
view in Calcutta. And what had they done? First,
they had saved a vast number of lives — that is certain.
Secondly, they had now a grain store for every village
where danger still threatened, a store within a mile and a
half of every village where the worst was presumed to be
over, and a well or tank, newly dug or repaired, for every
three villages. Thirdly, they had mastered a knowledge
of the district, for use if the famine continued.

I met an English contractor, a grave elderly man, of
high character, and with good testimonials of contract
work done during the Mutiny, who had been employing,
in this and neighbouring parts, from 5o,cxx) to 70,ocx)
persons, whose language, even, in many cases, he could not
speak. He was at this time engaged in putting up ten
miles ojE sheds, which he had bound himself under penalties
to finish at the rate of seven sheds (700 feet) a day. From
very early morning till late at night, he superintended the
work himself, with the pleasure at times of seeing the
police drive off large bodies (in one case 3CXX)) of his
trained men to do some other work. When he com-
plained they sent him untrained substitutes, who demanded
payment in advance and then ran away. A hundred like
difl&culties faced the aged contractor, who had dared to
undertake Government contracts during the first great
famine in India that England ever had set herself reso-
lutely to conquer.

Durbunga is a large zemindaree (estate) worth about
£150,000 a year clear income. The owner, the Maharajah
Luch Mahasu Singh, was a minor ; his coming of age was
only last year, 1876; and at the time of the famine the

2o6 ENGLISH RULE AND

young chief was under a private tutor at Benares. His
estate, meanwhile, under Colonel Burne, who acted for the
Court of Wards, had risen greatly in value, and his treasury
from a debt of £7CX), when the Maharajah died, to a balance
in hand of £500,000.

From the verandah where I wrote the prospect was
beautiful The country, though for practical purposes
apparently flat as a meadow, fifty miles on the one side to
the Ganges, and fifty on the other to the Terai, which
guarded the territory over which Jung Bahadoor then
ruled, was prettily broken up, and the green sward was of
an extraordinarily bright and beautiful green. In front
of the house a grove of Scotch firs enclosed an English
garden and an undulating lawn. Further away, and partly
embedded in cocoa-nut trees, were red-tiled houses, white
bungalows, and a host of tents ever increasing in number.
In the far distance, but easily discernible in the clear early
morning, were the mountains of Nepal.

Few of the people in all this district understood our
famine preparations. They knew, however, that Nepal
was the home of the Ghoorka mountaineers, who in years
gone by fought us gallantly, and who now supplied some
of our best soldiers ; and they knew also that Englishmen
chafed not a little at Sir Jung Bahadoor's isolation of his
territory. They saw the Muzzbee Sikhs constructing a
railway, and English ofiicers laying up stores of grain as
for a campaign; and an English colonel, for the young
Maharajah, making roads where roads never had been
made before. £200,000 had been taken from the Durbunga
estate for famine works; and one of the new roads had
been nin to the very edge of the Terai ; that is, to the
limit of the Durbunga estate. Everything betokened a
campaign. Nobody had ever before in the whole range of
tradition taken such steps to merely save life. That one
lesson, therefore, had some value.

Of course we blundered. We in one case sent out a
large body of men on a new principle of work, which cost

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 207

£40 in supervision and £20 in labour, and the value of
which was a mere trifle. An oflBcer concerned said, "I
was heartily ashamed of it." The first day's work on that
system, however, was the last. When road-making was
first ordered, it cost from £3, 6s. to £4 per cubic foot, and
was in the end done for 5 s. the cubic foot. Men made
fortunes by the sale of grain. The difl&culties with the
mothers among the workers were interminable. Nothing
could persuade them that their children, taken away to be
fed and nursed, were not intended to be kidnapped.

Sir Richard Temple was at Durbunga at this time, pre-
paring for a second year's famine, the provision for which
he would have to make in the rains, on an altogether
different principle, and from a new basis of operation.
When he had once made up his mind that famine was
imminent, he had laid down a plan from which he had
only departed in details. Contracts were entered into
with the planters for carriage. Ponies, mules, and bullocks
were bought up. Different companies were engaged to
supply carriage and to conduct supplies in so many differ-
ent directions radiating from the basis of operations ; and
when any lines failed. Sir Eichard Temple at once replaced
them by other lines radiating from other places.

The Government conveyance from the 15 th February
to the 15th June, had amounted to 2,3CX),ooo bags of grain,
and a proportionate amount of fodder ; or, roundly stated,
an amount of grain which laid down in bags would have
covered twelve and a half miles in length, a mile and
three-quarters in width, and twelve feet in height. The
contract service was for 40,CX)0 contract bullock carts (with
4CXX) Government carts in reserve). ii,cx)0 ponies and
mules, 1 500 camels, and 3000 pack bullocks. The remnants
of the ponies were tethered to trees, in what was called a
hospital, and I found Sir Eichard Temple at five o'clock
one morning inspecting them, and in mercy pronouncing
the death-warrant of a large number. From six to seven
hundred were mere skin and bone, and with backs fright-

2o8 ENGLISH RULE AND

fully lacerated, owing to hard work, bad driving, and want
of food.

I went from the hospital to the quarters of the Muzzbee
Sikhs. This fine regiment was one of those that joined us
during the Mutiny, and did such splendid service. Many
of their countrymen term them of low caste, while the men
themselves maintain that they are of the highest caste of
the Sikh race ; but they have no caste restrictions as to
meats and drinks. Their commanding officer. Colonel
Williams, commended at once their courage and their
honesty. He had, he said, sent them out freely day by
day, with money for road-making and other work, and they
had, he believed, answered for their trust faithfully. They
were armed with the Enfield rifle, carrying their pioneer
tools at their backs, and in a very few minutes could put the
regiment (officers* horses excepted) under cover on the ap-
proach of an enemy, after which they would meet him
with rifle and bayonet A finer regiment no officer need
have wished to command. It was not pleasant, after
learning these facts, to speak to an old soldier who had
had the honour of conveying a powder bag to the Cash-
mere Gate in the grand assault on Delhi, and who never-
theless remained undecorated, on the ground that the
regiment at the time had not been regularly enrolled in
the service. It made one almost shudder for the future of
England in India. The paltry technicality was worse
than an avowal that a brave man had been forgotten.

Of the work devised merely " to keep people employed,"
much might be said, and very much more of the stratagems,
and long walks under a burning sun, by which people
secured the stated amount of rice from two different centres
of relief on the same day. These stories are among the jokes,
sometimes grim jokes, of the famine work. I was more
concerned, however, in knowing how English residents and
the natives of this district had assisted the Government.
Of several planters. Sir Richard Temple, and many of his
officers, spoke in the highest praise. Of the leasing or

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 209

buying up of carriage in advance and re-letting it to the
Government, the best that any one said was that it had
been done in the way of trade. I think, however, it would
have been a good thing, in view of the future, to have
specially rewarded those planters who had given their
time and labour free.

With respect to the natives, an English gentleman
handed me an exact list of works done by a banker, at a
cost of £5 170 — a free gift. The tenants of the Durbunga
estate also, at their own cost, made 124 new tanks, and
restored a number. A man holding the position of chief
cultivator of a village, gave, in addition to many sums of
money, rice valued at £1000 to his poorer neighbours
before the Government famine works were opened. The
young Bajah also had cordially approved the great outlay
from his estate, as poon, which is worship, or charitable
work. At that time the certainty of a famine had not
been generally acknowledged. The benevolent action, how-
ever, won a great victory. For a long time the officers in
charge in Tirhoot had refused . permission for roads to be
made, on the ground that the collection of tolls, at gh&ts,
would be disarranged thereby. In consequence of this
absurd and iniquitous rule, rice in the wet season, when the
country was impassable, had been known to sell at 54 lbs.
the rupee, while sixty miles distant it was selling at from
130 lbs. to 150 lbs. for the same amount. The famine dis-
pelled this official stupidity, and now the Durbunga zemin-
daree has roads.

On the courteous invitation of the Lieutenant Governor,
I left Durbunga with his party, which indeed was my only
means of reaching the Ganges, and at the same time seeing
the work. The journey began at six o'clock in the morn-
ing in a third-class carriage ; a few Englishmen in the one
end, and their servants in the other ; the trolly-men, and
some Punjabees, who had begged a passage in a truck
behind. Sir Bichard had met his officers and discussed

their reports. He had now to decide upon a basis of opera-

2IO ENGLISH RULE AND

tions for the rains. The train made its way slowly along
a line which was now under water, till the engine was
brought to a stop by a broken bridge, and a walk of some
miles became indispensable. We found long strings of
bullocks and carts with Government grain, each cart in
charge of a number of sepoys, and each party commanded
by an English officer, a most laborious undertaking, the
wheels of the carts sinking deeply in the rough road-
less soiL All ceremony was dispensed with by the lieu-
tenant governor. He was an officer among officers, asking
questions, making suggestions, deciding differences — on
foot^ and ankle deep in mud. There was much to see and
inquire into on this journey. It was not, for instance,
unworthy of notice that a wire, laid across country on two
transverse pieces of bamboo, was the first telegraph wire
ever seen on that side the (Janges.

Arriving early in the morning — a Saturday morning — at
the bank of a small nulla, a rivulet partly formed by the
rains, we found the tender of the lieutenant governor's
yacht, and in it steamed down a distance of about seven
miles through a peaceful country to the Ganges, where the
yacht itself was anchored. The waters were fast rising,
and in a short time the country through which we passed
would be flooded, and would become the invaluable deeara
land, which would long retain its moisture under the
hottest sun. The first view of the (Janges, approached in
this way, in the early morning, was beautifiiL The river,
now broad as a sea, was covered with boats and a varied
human life. On the bank were hundreds of the camels,
borrowed some months earlier from the North Western
Provinces, and ready to be floated over the river for the
return home, their usefulness ceasing with dry weather,
and that of the elephant beginning. A long, dark movable
line across the water we found to be a vast herd of bullocks
or buffaloes on journey, their drivers swimming almost
silently among them; a scene several times repeated during
our run down the river.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 211

We passed several of the Dacca " pulwars/* with their
varnished sides, and matchless white sails, the first of the
private rice trade firom the Eastern Provinces; banks
crowded with bathers ; villages which sent out their young
and old to gaze upon, and wonder at, the crowded, busy
steamer in ewivance, and the beautiful yacht in tow ; lonely
tobacco factories, in a tobacco growing country; then
Monghyr itseK, and the " famine residence " of the lieu-
tenant governor. Then we anchored for the night, at the
confluence of the Bor Gunduk and the Ganges.

With daybreak the tender was turned upward in the Bor
Gunduk, and passed between two banks, in many parts
like the finest of English parks, the green grass relieved by
rich foliage and magnificent trees. A range of dark and
sombre mountains loomed high in the distance ; but the
great house at Monghyr stood out from first to last, and
amid interminable windings, the central object of alL
After an hour or two on this rivulet, Mr Bernard, Sir
Bichard's Temple's chief assistant in the famine work, and
whose exceedingly modest labour never was half acknow-
ledged in England, and probably never will be so now, began
to question the men of from fifty to sixty boats moored in
one place, and of selected boats from about two hundred
more which we passed, or which passed us, in a distance of
about thirteen miles, to a place called Khagaria, which was
to be the new basis of famine operations in case of need
during the rains. The cargoes were much of the same
. character as those noted in the previous chapter ; but the
visit was like a dash into a lottery, and Khagaria was
seen as it was; a rather pretty town, with good houses and
shops, a well-staked river bank, and a flourishing trade in
which the people said io,(XX> craft were engaged. A con-
ference of the leading people was held under a peepul tree,
and I suppose they learned from Mr Bernard, who was the
orator, that Khagaria was to be to a new series of opera-
tions what Ghumpta Ghki had been to those of the hot
months. Happily the new operations were not needed.

212 ENGLISH RULE AND

After a run of about seven hours, the tender again gave
place to the yacht, which was turned in the direction of
Monghyr.

The lieutenant governor's house, built on the site of the
old Mohammedan fort, on a hill covered with verdure, is
approached by a really grand avenue of grandly lofty trees,
whose tops seemed lost in clouds. On every side the
prospect was beautifuL In front were the Monghyr hills,
which, when a gathering storm rested on them, as we had
seen one rest on the previous day, were a very embodiment
of gloomy grandeur. Eight and left the Ganges seemed to
form a circle around Monghyr. In every direction there
was green undulating ground, with English and Native
houses, " each in its nook of leaves," and then a pretty
peaceful English church, from which, as we drove up the
avenue that Sunday evening, the English bells told of the
faith which had supplanted that of Mahomet in the for-
tress of Monghyr.

An inspection, which I did not see, of the recipients of
relief gave a return of 630 women and 142 men, of whom
493 women were old, haggard, and infirm and blind, para-
lytic, crippled, or idiots. The rest were unable to earn a
living. Of the men 26 were totally blind, and 8 1 cripples. A
little later there was an inspection, which I did see, and to
which I should not again care to see anything at all akin,
unless it was for some different purpose than merely
recording the facts. There were in all about 1000 persons,
the males and females on opposite sides of a yard. They
were mostly habitual beggars, brought in from the district
by the promised relief; but this only made the scene
sadder, as indicating a chronic sore. I do not indeed
mention it as belonging to the famine of 1873-74, but as
representing the deeper depth of the lot of the poor in
India. About half the thousand people were skin and
bone, and in most cases afflicted with frightful diseases,
made all the more horrible by the almost nude condition
of the sufferers. I do not wish to extend the picture, but

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 2 1 3

simply to deepen the fact that though the famine relief
had drawn the whole together a kindred whole separated
exists to-day in the same places. Passing slowly up and
down the lines, I did not see one reaUy cunning face. It
was not even a scene of despair. It was one of apathy
as beyond hope. There was in that yard a depth of misery
deeper far than the plummet of Sir Eichard Temple could
sound.

In the gaol of Monghyr I saw some exceedingly fine
work done by the prisoners; cloths of apparently as
intricate workmanship as those of Cashmere. In the
bazaar I saw scores of industries, and not any great sign
of distress. In the English town there was prosperity.
In the waysides and hedges there was what we have seen.
I wondered as I went from Monghyr if there never could be
any hope of making these poor people to really live. There
is this difference between their lot and that of the wretched
in Europe that, in a cold climate, people afflicted as those
whom I saw in Monghyr could not live a week. It is the
climate alone that makes life possible. Of the fort of
Monghyr I may simply add, that it encloses an area of
nearly two miles ; and that we have converted the palace
into a gaol, and the harem into cells, and have not put
them to bad uses on the whole.

A short railway ride, stopping to see relief stores and
the recipients of relief, brought us again to the tender, and
the tender brought us to the yacht. Next morning in the
early dawn a start was made for Moorshedabad, the Granges
hourly growing higher, and now still more resembling a
sea. I counted fully forty, in some cases large sea boats,
in a space not greater than the united length of the
steamer, its tow-rope, and the yacht. About a dozen
Dacca boats were seen altogether, and they reported a
fleet on the way with grain, which would probably be sold
before being landed. The sides of the river, seen in the
grey morning, were a deep green, with at times lofty
trees, grand as English oaks, and at others long tracts of

214 ENGLISH RULE AND

land under green paddy, interspersed again with well-built
and thatched houses, and at others with scenes of vast
pasture grounds and innumerable droves of cattle, some
hundreds in the drove. The steamer was stopped that
fish may be bought, boats hailed, villages visited. Then she
glided into the Bhaguratee, probably the ancient Granges,
which becomes the Hooghly below Moorshedabad.

At about an hour or so after noon the yacht was
anchored off Azimgunge, the European part of Moorshed-
abad, which once represented the sovereignty and power
to overcome which Clive fought Plassey. We were now
in the centre and heart of Bengal, and as we drew near to
Azimgunge the scene was most picturesque. Native
gentlemen and their retainers, in gay attire, were assembled
on both banks of the river to pay their respects to the
lieutenant governor. A little below there were small
bodies of police, in their blue coats and red turbans ; a
little higher vast crowds of people ; on the water the boats
of Europeans hastening to the yacht; in the background
temples and mosques embedded in groves of fine trees.
It was a curious and pretty scene. At Moorshedabad
I saw the last of the yacht; and making my way by a
short railway, I visited some of the less notable stores.
In one case, and I should say it was not an isolated case,
the store was kept by one man, who ate and slept in his
shed, and he believed, he said, that not a bag of his grain
had been stolen. This short railway was a little notable,
from the fact that it had been made to "pay" by the
manager becoming guard, ticket clerk, and station master,
and turning his van into a ticket office. His railway
stations were sod huts. He had a similar line, which we
shall see, from Calcutta to Port Canning.

Another series of journeys, in one direction to Pumeah,
and in another to Beerbhoom, enabled me to compare, on
the basis of perfectly independent movements, with very
different kinds of famine work, what I had seen in Tirhoot.
Travelling by palanquin and by d&k (post) gharry, and

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 2 1 5

gathering fresh notes from different clcisses of persons at
every stage, I saw the operations from quite another side,
though it is but fair to say that during the short time I
saw Sir Eichard Temple, he not merely did not in the
slightest degree attempt to influence my view, but he
never, as far as I know, learned directly or indirectly what
my view was on any important and still less on any dis-
puted point. When he gave me facts he gave them in a
gentlemanly way, and left thent Still for a comprehen-
sion of the true fact it was necessary to be alone ; and on
both sides of the river I sought out, in my own way, that
fact I have said before that there were errors which no
one could miss. I say, too, that Sir Eichard Temple
would not deny this. Grain had been sent to where it
hewi not been needed, and to where in fact it was in the
end sold. I met carts bringing grain from and carts tak-
ing grain to Pumeah. I met boats on the Ganges doing
exactly the same thing. I saw the river steamboats sent
out from England and condemned to uselessness by the
fact that they would only go with the stream. There had
been some mistake, either as to power of engine, or as to
Indian fuel, or something. I found people who derided
the whole operations; but nearly always, if not always,
people who believed that famines were " a wise provision
to clear off the useless population ; " a belief of which I need
scarcely say more to any reasonable, not to say humane,
person. I met with some harsh officers, and some who,
apparently harsh in manner, were kind in fact, who had
simply become soured imder their many vexations and the
Indian sun.

I saw also, however, an earnestness of puipose of which
England will never have cause to be ashamed. From
Lord Northbrook and Sir George Campbell and Sir Eichard
Temple to the humblest officer, there was, as it were,
the one grand resolve not to let the people die. The
officers in the main entered into the spirit of their
chiefs, even where they did not fuUy approve the order

2i6 ENGLISH RULE AND

given in some special case. The greatest mistake in Sir
Richard Temple's work has, I think, been, since 1874, in
the sharp punishment of a young officer who was sup-
posed to be the writer of a pamphlet criticising the famine
policy. If the presumed author is the gentleman I sup-
pose, then, though I think his pamphlet an error, I am
certain he has not an atom of bitterness in his nature, and
that Sir Bichard Temple had not a more earnest worker in
the Presidency. Sir Eichard or some one ought to repair
the error of this punishment. In aU fundamentals I am
assured that the famine policy was a true policy, worthy
of the men whose names it bears, and of the nation they
represented. It would have been impossible for any man,
of whatever gifts, to see the whole of so vast a district ;
and it must not be forgotten that though Sir Eichard
Temple had great power within limits, there were the limits
of public opinion which he could not pass, and which,
indeed, have since been pressed strongly against him.

Two questions remain. First, Ought England to have
paid the cost of the Bengal famine ? Secondly, Are the
famine operations in Bengal and Behar no guide to the
present and the future ? There are two sides to the ques-
tion of England's duty to India in such cases as that of the
debt contracted for the Bengal famine. An Indian official,
writing some weeks ago, asked indignantly if England, which
paid four millions and a half for the Suez Canal shares,
could not give as much to save life in Bengal. The reply
is simple. England can, and ought, if it is necessary, and if
she is able to meet such responsibilities, if established as
a rule. It is more than likely, however, that if such claims
were pressed by English officers, England, especially with
an enlarged suffrage and her fearful amount of poverty,
would be likely to ask what exact benefit she received as a
nation from her connection with India, and whether she
was not paying, as she might for a university, for the
benefit of classes. If that inquiry ever is made by a
democratic House of Commons, the chances are that the

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 217

decision will not be what some Anglo-Indian writers would
desire. It would be a tremendous mistake on the part of
the democratic House of Commons and of England, but
it probably would be made. Officers receiving an in-
come from Indian revenue may think it right that Eng-
land and not India ought to pay the bill for a famine ; but
what the poor in England will think, with squalor and
poverty at their doors, is also a fundamental consideration.

Again, the great aim of financial legislation in India
has been to enable India to pay her way legitimately
from her own revenue. It is essential that she should
do so. If she cannot, the expenditure ought to be reduced.
Some — not all — ^Anglo-Indian writers, in fact, say, "Let
individual Englishmen, or classes of Englishmen, draw
upon India, and let England, as a nation, return the
money to India in case of famines." It may be reason-
able ; it certainly is not wrong to receive fair remunera-
tion for labour ; but, all the same, England is much more
likely to say, "Eather curtail the drawing from India."
That also assuredly is the way in which, in the long run,
ends will be made to meet. The argument put forward,
therefore, of national responsibility, should not be pressed
home too closely on England, at least by Indian officers,
even in these cases of vastly solemn importance. Let Eng-
land honestly pay back to India the money unfairly, if not
unjustly, taken from her poverty to entertain the Sultan of
Turkey and such like matters. Let her pay it even to the
cost of the Madras famine ; but let it be on that principle,
or as a free gift from individuals, which would be highly
honourable — the only two principles perceptible in this
case, in either ethics or common sense, as the key-stone of
English policy.

Did then the famine operations in Bengal convey no
lesson with respect to the present and the future ? Surely
they conveyed at least this lesson, that if our professions in
1873-74 were not a mere spirit of humanity and morals,
they could not end with Bengal and the year 1874. If we

2 1 8 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA .

were bound to meet that famine, we are bound, within the
range of our power as a nation, to meet every famine. We
are bound to find a Viceroy who can put an end to famines,
as Lord Mayo believed he had put an end to deficits. By
storing water, by fostering trade, by extending railways
or canals, by curtailing expenditure, some man of genius
will put an end to famines. If we cannot find a man of
genius, or if, having found such a man, we refuse to follow
him, and give him earnest support, we shall not, by mere
strength of arm and will, hold India. Sir Richard Temple
is not a man of genius. He is simply a cheerful man, of
great determination, with a clear eye for facts, an un-
doubted power of organisation, and a disposition with
which other men can work, and whom no man is wounded
in his self-respect by serving. Of Lord Mayo much the
same statement might be made. Lord Northbrook, as
Viceroy, was different ; his merit was not in making hard
work light, but in an essential veracity dominating what
he did.^ When, however, England can find a man of
high genius — a man, as George Dawson would have said,
like King Alfred, or as India would say, like Akbar, to
establish her rule in justice — and England will enable
him when found to act in defiance of all interests save
those of humanity, she will also, in these days of steam, of
mechanical ingenuity and electricity, find means to put an
end to " the era of famines," save in exceptional cases be-
yond human foresight, and certainly as chronic sores in the
social system. Native India, with whose permanent in-
terests our transient individual interests cannot compare,
knows this well; but Native India believes that, if a really
great ruler were found to set special interests at defiance,
the special interests would fight hard to defeat and ruin
him.

^ Appendix VL

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BRITISH INDIAN ASSOCIATION — THE PERMANENT
LAND SETTLEMENT IN BENGAL — PRISONS AND
POLICE.

In looking for some social organisation^ a connecting link
between the forms of English life and the enduring inter-
ests of the people of India, I have been able to find nothing
more suitable to the purpose in view than the British
Indian Association, whose headquarters are in Calcutta.
It is essentially a landlords' association ; and as such has
been the butt of much sarcasm, often both unjust and
stupid ; while, however, it would be absurd to say that the
association, on its own part, representing Indian interests,
not to India but to England, has escaped error. What
chiefly attracted my own attention in the Association, and
attracted it in spite of the fact that, if justice were not
justice, whether on the side of landlord or tenant, rich or
poor, my sympathies never would have been with a land-
lords' association, I shall endeavour to state in this
chapter.

Till this year the president of the Association was the
Maharajah Bomanath Tagore Bahadoor, a venerable noble-
man, who died in June last, seventy-seven years of age.
Created a Bajah, and honoured with the Star of India by
Lord Northbrook, he was, at the Delhi ceremonial, raised
to the rank of Maharajah by Lord Lytton ; and the hon-
our paid to him was accepted as a compliment by nearly the
whole native community. The secretary of the association
is Baboo Kristo Das Pal, editor of the Hindoo Patriot,
member of the Bengal Council, and recently appointed by

220 ENGLISH RULE AND

Lord Ljrtton one of a committee to examine and report
upon a system of educational text-books for Bengal One
of Baboo Kristo Das Pal's claims to distinction is that no
man in Calcutta has been better abused ; and one of the
best grounds upon which his friends and enemies are justi-
fied in refusing him any sympathy or condolence in his
trouble, is that the abuse seems to have fallen from him
harmlessly, and often as if he knew nothing of its
existence.

Of Bomanath Tagore much might be written, now that
his tongue is silent and his pen for ever at rest. In learn-
ing, in grace of manners, in a long course of honourable
relation to commerce, and in a thousand efforts to improve
the lot of the people of Bengal, his life, I have heard, was
highly distinguished, and very beautiful. Like his brother
Dwarkanath, and his cousin Prosuna Coomar Tagore, he
was a disciple of Rajah Ram Mohun Roy, and in that way,
as in others, strove to raise the tone and character of rich and
poor alike, in morals, in material comfort, and in manhood.
On receiving the news of his death, Lord Lytton wrote :
" Both the Government and the whole native community
of Bengal have lost a wise, an honest, and a trusted
adviser ; " and the praise was not lavish.^

One of the standing charges against the Association is
that by its very nature it is a system of organised selfish-
ness. If the charge is valid, it applies equally to our
chambers of commerce, our landlords' and tenants' leagues,
our trades' associations, and a hundred other organisations
of English life. It is, as they are, intended to defend
interests .often assailed; and it^ like them, has shown
again and again that it could step out of the restric-

^ At a remarkable meeting held a little later in Calcutta, a friend of the
dead nobleman told of how nine hundred years earlier, while the Normans
were conquering England, *'five Brahmins came to this country from Canouj
at the invitation of the ruler. On their arrival they were ennobled, and ever
after maintained their nobility. They were even respected by their Moham-
medan rulers. One of these five became the Rajah of Nuddea, while another,
from whom the Tagores were descended, became a zemindar."

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 221

tions of partial interests into the general gooi I am not
saying this in ignorance of the fact that it has at times
opposed great improvements, exactly as English landlords
opposed railways, and English workmen broke machinery.
But the reader may rest assured that this Association of
Native India, while in the narrow sense of the nature of
our own organisations for special interests, can also like
them claim to stand somewhat higher.

I have before me a complete collection of the tracts,
pamphlets, and reports of the Association since its forma-
tion in 185 1. They were presented to me, as also were
the tracts and pamphlets of the Brahmists, on my first
leaving India ; and now, five years after that time, I am
attempting to make both to represent some degree of truth
with reference to Indian affairs. There is scarcely a sub-
ject of Indian legislation in relation to Sir Barnes Peacock,
Sir Henry Maine, and Sir James Stephen, in law, or to
finance ministers, or to public works, or to anything, that
is not in some way dealt with in these publications. There
are pamphlets on the land, on tenant right, on revenue, on
salt, on civil and criminal justice, on the representation of
India in Parliament. Government despatches and minutes
are republished with comment ; struggling native societies
assisted; the state of districts as to moral and material
wants made known. The evidence at once of loyalty and
of opposition to maladministration are on every hand, and
are continued from year to year. One pamphlet is ex-
haustive of Mr Wilson's financial proposals, another of
Mr Laing*s, another of Sir Eichard Temple's. Opinions as
to the causes of epidemics are given at length, on tha basis of
special investigation. In 1856 a missionary memorial for
inquiry into the condition of the ryots (tenants), is sup-
ported. Remarks, sometimes very pointed, are made on
particular acts of officers, civil and military. The fourth
report (that of 1856) has a curious interest, from the fact
that it was published on the eve of the Mutiny. It is,
however, like its predecessors, purely social in its character,

222 ENGLISH RULE AND

and relates to subjects which, whatever the ruling power
may be, whatever the storms and convulsions in politics or
war, will continue to affect the deep sea of the human life
of India. Taken in this way the reports may suggest
solemn thoughts.

It will not have escaped the reader's notice that an
association like this, composed of wealthy and influential
men, may at times have had unpleasant relations to
Englishmen. Some oflBcers have disliked it for the power it
wields, and for the resolution it has manifested. To missions
some of its leading men (as, for instance, Dwarkanath
Tagore) have been determinately opposed. But that such
an association is other than a legitimate outcome of the
relations of educated India to England, will hardly be dis-
puted. To call public attention to questions of importance,
as they arise, and thus make known the wishes of the
people, is surely a service to the Government, and to aU
who are interested in India, There is no trace in the
pamphlets of ill-feeling towards England, and assuredly
no trace of disloyalty in any one of them that I have seen.
In fact, in right or in wrong, the Association is an exact
counterpart of associations which in England are deemed
a mark and sign of public spirit and usefulness.

One of the great subjects that has appeared in the
reports of the Association from year to year is that of the
permanent land settlement in Bengal. In order to com-
prehend this imceasing controversy, it must be remembered
that Indian revenue in all past times has rested, as it still
rests, fundamentally on the land. Whether the State was
landlord, and the nominal landowners only tenants in
perpetuity, or whether the land was private property and
the amount paid yearly to the State of the nature of taxa-
tion, has comparatively small bearing on the dispute.

The settlement dates from the year 1793, when Lord
Comwallis, assisted by Mr Shore, arranged the commuta-
tion, for a fixed and unalterable sum, of all charges resting
on the land as the revenue of the State. For a long time

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 223

this settlement was accepted by every one, English and
Native of India, as including all claims of the State on the
Bengal " settled " land. On the strength of this belief waste
lands were reclaimed (as they had not been when the settle-
ments were for terms of years) ; and on the same beUef lands
were transferred from the first occupants to others (from
putneedar, the first possessor, to dur-putneedar), and so on,
till at last, on principles common to all lands, though the
original tenure remains, the property bought at the market-
rate at the time of purchase, and on the tenure of a perma-
nent settlement, may have repeatedly changed hands.

In the course of time it was discovered that the Indian
Government could manage a little better with an enhanced
revenue, and a question as to the meaning of the permanent
settlement of Lord Comwallis was raised. That the terms
used were explicit as to the settlement including all charges,
could not be disputed ; but then it was said, does not this
simply mean all charges as rent in the English sense,
leaving the question of cesses untouched ? Some of the
ablest officers in the service unhesitatingly repudiated this,
as a quibble unworthy of the Government and of England.
The English landlords paid taxes but no rent. The Bengal
landlords paid rent, which included taxes; and it was
shown clearly that if any doubt had existed as to the per-
manent settlement covering all claims of the Government,
the arrangement never could have been made. The land-
lords woidd have gained nothing whatever of the certainty
which they sought, and which the Government undertook
to secure to them.

Men like Mr Shore had shown at the time that a per-
manent settlement was a very hazardous settlement ; but
even that fact only strengthened the case against the new
claim, since it showed that, bad or good, the first and long-
accepted meaning was the correct one. That the bargain
had been made in the dark as to the value of the land, did
not afiect the question. Yet even on that ground it was
shown that the land for long periods had been unremunera-

224 ENGUSH RULE AND

live to the owners or cultivators. They had accepted risks,
simply because of the certainty ; and if the land had in-
creased in value, from whatever cause, the increment they
maintained, and many Englishmen maintained for them,
was their own by law as well as by common sense. Then
the point of the rights of the tenants as a set-off to that
of the landowners was raised, and was made a promi-
nent factor in the dispute by men who never will raise
the same question at home. What it reaUy involved we
shall see. What I think we shall not see is that the perman-
ent settlement involved only rent and not cessea ; and I say
this with not an atom of sympathy with any landlord in
Bengal or anywhere, who refuses to accept the fair and
just responsibilities of changing times.

During Lord Mayo's vice-royalty, the question fell to Sir
Jam^s Stephen, who boldly asserted that cesses were not
included in the settlement The zemindars had a short
time previously explained and maintained in public meet-
ing, that when the Government of 1 793 sought for a fixed
in place of an uncertain revenue, they obtained a revenue
80 high that for a long time many of the owners of land
were unable to cultivate what they had acquired, and in
many cases were compelled to part with their land to
persons possessing capital All, however, it was alleged,
was borne with patience because of the permanence at
once of the tenure and the rent.

Mr Stephen said he had no doubt but that what Lord
Comwallis and those who acted with him sought to create
was an ownership in land. Lord Comwallis had said :

" Although I am not only of opinion that the zemindars have the
best right, but from being persuaded that nothing could be so ruinous
to the public interest as that the land should be retained as the pro-
perty of Qovemment, I am also convinced that failing the claim of
right of the zemindars, it would be necessary for the public good to
grant a right of property in the soil to them, or to persons of other
descriptions. I think it unnecessary to enter into any discussion of
the ground upon which their right seems to be founded."

Mr Stephen considered three points settled :

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 225

'* 1. That the zemindars were the most conspicuous of the numerous
persons who were interested in the land.

*'2. That intricate and imperfectly understood relations existed
between them and the ryots.

'* 3. That the right of the Qovemment to exact a share of the pro-
duce of the land ascertained by no fixed rule, and varying from time
to time in proportion to the increased yield of the land, was practi-
cally inconsistent with the existence of rights of private property,
and reduced the value of such rights where they existed to a shadow.

*' The great object of the permanent settlement was to put an end
to this tmcertain, indefinite, and fluctuating state of things, and to
substitute for it a system of permanent property in which the zemin-
dars were to be landlords on the English model, the ryots tenants,
also on the English model, and in which the land revenue was to
form a permanent rent charge of fixed amount to be paid to the
Government by the zemindar. I need not enter into the subject of
the provisions which expressly reserved to the Qovemment the right
of interfering between the zemindar and the ryot to protect the in-
terests of the latter.'*

No one, Mr Stephen continued, was more impressed
than he was with the importance of scrupulously main-
taining the pledges of 1793. But he added :

*' It is possible to construe those pledges in a manner so extrava^
gant as to raise the question whether they were pledges which the
Government of that day had any moral right to make, for legal right
they could have none. If Lord ComwalUs had in direct words en-
gaged that a certain scheme of taxation settled by him should be per-
manent, and that no other taxes whatever should ever be raised in
the territory to which it applied, it would have been necessary to look
this question in the face. I refer to it only in order to suggest to
those who claim the fulfilment of the pledge given in 1793, that it is
very unwise in them to put upon it a sense which might sooner or
later force upon the Government the alternative of permanently ar-
resting the improvement of Bengal, or of declaring that Lord Com-
wallis had given a pledge which he had neither the legal right nor
the moral power to give."

This was startling, and would, as we may see, be a little
more startling if applied to England. No one knows
better than Mr Stephen the right of prescription ; the un-
assailable position of an agreement allowed to rest on what

the Scotch call ** use and wont." Mr Stephen continued :

p

226 ENGLISH RULE AND

" The land revenue is, in my opinion, neither rent nor taxation : it
is the property of the Government just as the Crown lands in £ngland
are the property of the Queen. And the existence of a right to im-
pose taxes for the general good upon all other property, whether de-
rived from land or from other sources, is no more inconsistent with the
proprietary right in the one case than in the other. It may be asked
what good there was in the permanent settlement, what great benefit
it conferred upon the landholders of Bengal, if it left their property
subject to taxation ? The answer is that it reduced to a certainty one
particular charge on that land which had previously been of variable
amount) and so freed the landholders from the uncertainty which bad
previously hung over them in respect of it"

This is Mr Stephen's view, which, however, was not
allowed to settle the question. Baboo Degumber Mitter
in public meeting denied that the settlement of 1793 was
an easy one to the zemindars. While he said the land
settlements in the North West, for a term of years, were on
the basis of 70 per cent, of the gross rental to the State,
and 30 to the zemindar, in Bengal the State had 90 per cent,
and left only 10. He declared also that till the last four-
teen or fifteen years the assets of the estates that contained
no waste land had been very trifling, and that those which
had contained waste land, in many cases " thrown in with
the bargains," had required immense outlay before there
had been any profit. Another native gentleman said the
great Mogul (Akbar's) financier, Todur Mull, settled the
land revenue at one-third of the produce of the soil, and
that the Government of Lord Comwallis eflfected a settle-
ment 50 per cent, in excess of that of any Hindoo or
Mohammedan monarcL " The one redeeming feature was
its permanence." The following extracts from the views
of distinguished Englishmen were given in a petition
adopted by the meeting.

*' Sir Erskine Perry said : ' The questions at issue between the
Supreme Government of India and the Qovemment of Bengal are —
Ist. Whether it is a breach of the engagements made by the Qovem-
ment at the time of the permanent settlement to subject the zemindars
of Bengal to Bpecial taxation, in addition to the general taxation that

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 227

may be imposed upon them in common with the lest of the com-
munity. 2d. Whether it is expedient to impose on the landholders of
Bengal a special cess for education, assuming it to be just to impose
a local tax on them for any special object. I object to the despatch
of the Secretary of State, because even in its modified form it seems
to decide, and, I believe, does decide, that there is nothing in the
language or promises of the Government in 1793 to preclude the pre-
sent Government from levying local taxes in Bengal for local objects.
I have come reluctantly to the conclusion, after many struggles and
attempts to draw fine distinctions in support of a different view,
that the language and acts of Lord Comwallis, and of the members of
Government of his day, were so distinct, solemn, and unambiguous,
that it would be a direct violation of British faith to impose special
taxes in the manner proposed/ Sir Frederick Halliday took the
same view. Mr Prinsep said : * I have never felt so deeply grieved
and disappointed at a decision given in opposition to my expressed
opinions as when it was determined by a casting vote to approve and
forward this despatch. To the zemindars the rate or cess, call it by
what name you will, would be an " abwab " of the specific kind that
the proclamation of Lord Comwallis assured them against being ever
called upon to pay.* Sir H. C. Montgomery said : * A Government
should not, in my opinion, voluntarily place itself in a position lay-
ing it open to be charged with a breach of faith. It should rather
avoid any measure which would be so held in the estimation of its
subjects spedaUy interested.' " Many similarly expressed views fol-
lowed.

Leaving this meeting, and going back to the time of the
settlement itself, we find the exact question of permanency
raised by Mr Law, collector of Shahabad, who " pointed out
the desirableness or good policy of an exceptional provision
for extraordinary levies for extraordinary occasions, such as
war, following the English precedent in such cases." Mr
Shore replied : " This qualification is, in fact, a subversion of
the fundamental principle; for, the exigencies not being
defined, a Government may interpret the conditions ac-
cording to its own sense of them. ... The explana-
tion is, that temporary extraordinaries must have temporary
resources, and even the land at home is liable to a general
tax during war ; but the land tax in England does not hear
a proportion of nine-tenths to the income of the proprietor."

228 ENGLISH RULE AND

Nothing in language could be stronger. Passing to the
Government Eegulation I., 1793, we read :

"The Governor General in Council trusts that the proprietors of
land, sensible of the benefits conferred upon them by the public
assessment being fixed for ever, will exert themselves in the cultiva-
tion of their lands, tmder the certainty that they will enjoy exclusively
the fruits of their own good management and industry, and that no
demand will ever be made upon them, or their heirs, or successors, by
the present, or any future Government, for an augmentation of the
public assessment, in consequence of the improvement of their
respective estates."

In a letter to the Directors it is added : " If at any future
period the public exigencies should require an addition to
your resources, you must look for it in the increase of the
general wealth and commerce of the country, and not in
the augmentation of the tax upon the land." This was
most definite.

The Duke of Argyll took a curiously evasive position.
" The income tax," he said, " is not an increase of the pub-
lic demand levied upon the zemindars in consequence of
the improvement of their estates," and " the same essential
distinction may be established between the original assess-
ment which was fixed for ever and every kind of tax, or
cess, or rate, which is levied irrespective of the increased
value or produce of land." Sir James Stephen took the
same view, and used almost the same language.

All that can be said with respect to this is, that if the
Duke of Argyll and Sir James Stephen were right in their
view, the writer of the Eegulation, and all who were con-
cerned in it, knew that they were guilty of deceiving the
people of Bengal as no statesmen of like character ever
before had deliberately deceived any body of men in the
world's history. If the Duke of Argyll said to one of his
tenants, " Your rent, as established now, shall be perpetual,
at the same amount, and I request you to throw all your
labour and skill into the cultivation of the land, resting
assured that, whatever increment may accrue therefrom
shall be your own, and your rent remain the same," his

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 229

tenant would understand, as the Bengal zemindars under-
stood, that the only cause that could possibly be alleged as
a plea for an enhanced rent, the increment of the value of
the land, was to be for ever set aside. That is, the assess-
ment was not to be raised on any plea whatever. There
are men who boast that they never make an agreement
without contriving some loophole for escape if the agree-
ment should become untenable ; but such men are not
statesmen, nor gentlemen. Now Lord Comwallis and Mr
Shore were both statesmen and gentlemen, and perceiving
in what light their words were being taken, it is certain
that, if the impression of the zemindars had been an incor-
rect one. Lord Comwallis and Mr Shore would at once,
and carefully, have set it right, instead of deepening the
error by language as strong as men could use. In fact, if
the Government of 1793 did not mean to make a settle-
ment including all direct charges on land, it is utterly
useless relying on any language whatever. If such an
agreement had been made between two individuals, the
one representing the side of the statesman of 1793 would
not have dared to carry it into an English law court. With
respect to the Bengal lands having the same relation to
the Grovemment in India that the Crown lands have to
that of England, why the one single ifact that the rent,
whether drawn directly by the Queen or not, is stUl Her
Majesty's private property — that is, that the Queen is not
England — ^the State — ^in relation to this land, as she is in
other respects — overturns the argument. The Indian
Government has the double relation unknown in England.
Moreover, although the Duke of Argyll and Sir James
Stephen say that the increase in the value of the land is
not the ground alleged for the virtual increase of rent by
actual cesses, the gentlemen who first raised, and those
who continue the discussion, do not say so. They say
distinctly, " How are we to reach these rich men ? " That
question was the germ of the income tax. Now, consider-
ing — and I believe it is the fact — ^that the lands have, as a

230 ENGLISH RULE AND

rule, only become valuable property of late years, what is
the actual — leaving out of question the nominal — ground
of the enhancement of rent? Why, that property is
more valuable. " How are we to reach these rich men ? "
Why, you reach them already by a rent which was once
assessed at the rate of 90 per cent of the value. "Ah ! " it
is said, " but the value has increased." Then you would
raise the rent because the value of the land has been
enhanced? There is no escape — history will find no
escape — ^from the plain, certain, and unmistakable fact

If we extend Sir James Stephen's argument in another
direction it will not seem less questionable. If, he says,
the Bengal claims are unduly pressed, it may be necessary
to deny the moral right of Lord Comwallis — ^" for legal right
he had none " — to make the settlement. No right to make
a settlement which the Court of Directors, and, by inference,
the Parliament of England, accepted ? Is this great nation
to proceed upon the principle that, having made a treaty
by one of her oflBcers, and allowed it to pass as a treaty for
half a century, she is justified, after all the parties to the
treaty are dead, in questioning the moral right, and deny-
ing the legal right, of her oflBcer to make the compact ?
The argument — and I imply no disrespect to the upright
motives of Sir James Stephen — could only have been used
on the strength of the bayonets commanded at that time
by Lord Napier of Magdala.

Sir James Stephen makes another assertion which may
be more tenable, but certainly might be more awkward,
taken in connection with the other parts of his argument,
if pushed home in England, when he says that the zemin-
dars were intended to be landlords on the English system,
and the ryots tenants on the same system. If this be so,
the argument must be allowed to cut both ways. The
cases, let us say with Sir James Stephen, are alike, and
the tenants in Bengal have a claim to tenant right. Then
the English tenant must have the same right That he
has no exact chartered guarantee of perpetuity of tenure

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 231

or the protection of his earnings, is nothing. It is quite
enough that the moral right of the king who gave the
grants of land to the landlord can be questioned. In fact,
the arguments used in Bengal would, if applied to Eng-
land, upturn the foundations of existing English society.
Has the reader observed how many of the land theories of
the last quarter of a century have come from men who
knew India, and how likely India is to supply the examples
for tearing up inconvenient compacts ?

We have seen that the zemindars deny that the settle-
ment of 1 793 was a favourable one. But supposing it had
been a favourable one, that the profits had come at once,
and even, apart from the landlords, by some independent
progress of trade — what then ? The property of the Duke of
Westminster and the Duke of Bedford has been increased
beyond human comprehension by the progress of London,
and the Earl of Derby's by that of Manchester and Liver-
pool. In these cases also the increment has been made
altogether independent of those to whom the benefit has
accrued. Yet it has not yet been proposed to the House
of Commons to deny the tenure on which the land rests,
on the ground that some one, in the first instance, gave the
land who had no right, moral or legal, to do so, and that
new times having brought new and unforeseen national
needs, the tenure must be challenged. AU this, however,
is applied to Bengal.

"How," then, "are we to reach these rich men?" If
we are in earnest, and merely require a certain reasonable
thing done— -do not, in fact, wish ourselves to handle the
money — the question is as simple as a sum in simple pro-
portion. " Would you," people ask, "allow the zemindars to
escape their just responsibility to their tenants?" I would
not allow them to escape any just, and I would not entail
on them any unjust, responsibility. The law is one safe-
guard of the tenants; the power to refuse labour is another.
The right of the tenant to a fair amount of the fruit of his
labour would not involve any breach of covenants. Then,

232 ENGLISH RULE AND

I think, the Grovemment would have a perfect right to say
to the zemindars : " We shall not, beyond the guaranteed
permanent settlement, claim to use on^ rupee of your
money ; but we shall expect you to make roads, and main-
tain schools yourselves, the money not coming into Eng-
lish hands." If they refused to do this they would be
indictable as for a nuisance, or breeding fever. But I do
not think they would refuse it. I believe they would
accept the responsibility. Do we, apart from this, need
the money ? The late Mr Marshman held that India
could be well governed on twenty millions a year less than
it now costs. Sir George Campbell laudably tried to
establish elective municipalities, which might have solved
the question of how to do all that we claim to do in
Bengal, without breaking a pledge which is as clear and
unmistakable as the coronation oath. I do not say that the
question is free from difficulties. With men whose motives
are as far above suspicion as those of Sir George Campbell,
Colonel Nassau Lees, Sir James Stephen, the Eev. James
Long, and the Duke of Argyll, in favour of finding some
means of virtually setting the settlement aside, there
must have been some questionable landlordisuL But so is
there in England and Scotland ; and so in a far weightier
sense is there in Ireland. Yet we do not break compacts
on such pleas in the United Kingdom.

The settlement on a permanent basis was made — first,
because the Government wanted more money than they
could secure on any other basis ; and secondly, because the
land was not improved on the periodical settlements, lest the
rent should be raised. The Government have now from the
land of India, generally, £2i,cxx),cxx) of the £50,000,000 of
revenue. It never seems to occur to some people that money
taken from land or trade for mere executive government,
is so much drawn from the marrow and life of industry.

If the plea of care for the tenants were real on the part
of those Englishmen who generally make it, every man who
wished well to India would support it, or at least try to

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 233

comprehend it ; but it is, in most cases clearly, and in some
avowedly, used merely to show the landlords that there is
behind the general question one other fulcrum from which
to overturn an inconvenient settlement. Few persons in
England would support that. There is indeed one sub-
stantial ground upon which the rights of the tenants ought
to be insisted upon, and upon which the right even of
Lord ComwaUis to make the settlement might have been
disputed, if only it had been disputed in tima The true
owners of the land of old were the village communities,
whose contractors or agents the zemindars in the first
instance were. That system we broke. We made the
contractors into landlords. We eflfected a virtual revolution.
On this ground the tenants have rights, and from this
position the zemindars should not be allowed to escape,
always provided the Government does not claim to itself
benefit pecuniarily by what is done. In 1793 the change
was convenient. In 1877 what might not have been done
if we had the village communities, and had had also, as
however, events show we never should have had, men
who knew how to direct them aright into grooves of social
progress?

From this brief statement of facts the reader may gather
the true meaning of the dispute on the permanent land
settlement I am no advocate of the zemindars, as they
have known. But rather than quibble with plain words,
I would say with Sir James Stephen, "We disown the
compact made eighty-four years ago. We shall have a new
' lotting ; ' " and if some shrewd man desires to apply the
same law to England, to Henry II. and Henry VIII. and
Charles II. and William III., why there will be nothing
left for us but to admit that the application is valid. We,
of all people in the world, the loudest in our talk about
" vested rights," shall have shaken vested rights at home
and abroad to their foundations.

From the question of land to that of prisons and police
is not so long a stride as it might appear. One of the

234 ENGLISH RULE AND

peculiarities of a native policeman is that he will not, as a
rule, touch an Englishman if he can help it First, he
dreads the Englishman's prowess in pugilism, and secondly,
his power to engage a counsel to turn evidence inside out
in a law court Sir James Stephen simplified much of
this, however, by his reform of the criminal law. One
measure to revise the law as to Pleaders and Mooktears
must have almost revolutionised the practice of Indian
courts. The Pleader is still, as afore, allowed to make his
own terms with his client, but those terms are now sub-
ject to revision, and may be set aside by the court. This
was one of the most beneficent measures of all these
reforms. The lobbies and corridors of an Indian court
present such a mass of cunning and intrigue as perhaps no
lobbies in the whole world could surpass, and an amount
of sharpened intellect which only needs physique to set
European advocacy at defiance. The act of Sir James
Stephen touched the intrigue in its vital parts.

That the police are often in league with thieves is well
known. In Lord Elgin's time it was thought that we
had arrived at a stage when the Thuggee and Dacoitee
department might be abolished in British territory; but
the department was still continued in native states, and a
comparatively recent report (about 1871) stated that in
the Nizam's dominions the chowkeedars,^ the only police
employed in some districts, being paid in kind, and
often very badly, made up their wages by robbery. The
dacoits were numerous and both of Hindoo and Moham-
medan races. " Many of the recognised police also
of the Hyderabad district were habitual robbers." The
department had on its rolls at the end of 1868 no fewer
than 197 "converted" Thugs, and 306 "reclaimed"
dacoitee approvers. Eighty-four of the reclaimed Thugs,
and 106 of the converted dacoits, had died during the
previous five years. Of a gang discovered in Indore in
1865, one good man confessed to eleven murders, of which

1 A lort of rural police.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 235

he gave ghastly particulars, but he added that he was now
touched with a sense of his wickedness and would help
the cause of righteousness. The favourite plan was to
entice the victims into houses and strangle them, or to
appear as wayfarers on the rocwi, and share their sweet-
meats with strangers, who, of course, they either drugged
or poisoned. Parents were strangled to obtain possession of
their children; the hands and feet of children were cut off for
the otherwise irremovable rings that Indian children wear
from infancy on wrists and ankles. One yoimg approver,
a leader, who had been saved from transportation, was
induced by Colonel Harvey, head of the department, to
marry, and turn over a new leaf. The good-natured
colonel himself attended the wedding. "But mind," he
said, "if you play me false I shall follow you all through
India." The approver did play false, and he was followed
from Delhi to Mysore, then back by the Bombay and
Madras frontiers, and recaptured. This is but a glimpse
of a great romance. To touch the detective department
would be to open a history out of all proportion to the
limits of this work.

I visited a number of prisons, and among them, in 1870,
the great gaol of Alipore near Calcutta. It was at Alipore
that Sir George Campbell resolved to try his experiment as
to sharper punishment ; to set the " productive " system aside.
What astounded people most, however, was the direct as-
sertion of Sir George Campbell, that an abnormal death-
rate must be looked for, and, indeed, was a proper deterrent
from crime. The minute said :

*•*• His honoiir'a impression is strong, and he thinks that most
officers of experience will bear him ont, that the real terror of our
gaols is not (in any part of India that he knows) the gaol discipline,
but that men do not like to be taken from their families. And what
they much dread, or (what is more important) what the families and
friends they leave behind them much feel, is the great probability
that they will never come back again. With the rates of mortality
we have had, and even with those we have, this probability of dying
in gaol is undoubtedly a very great deterrent. If we succeeded in

236 ENGLISH RULE AND

making our gaols very healthy, we should be driyen to make them
more disagreeable in other ways ; and that is just what we cannot
do. The harder the work and the discipline, the greater the death-
rate, is the only sanitary rule that may be taken to be pretty generally
true in Indian gaols/'

There are some things that it is not pleasant to even
think, and there are some things a man may think, yet
ought not to say. To which class Sir George Campbell's
words belonged, the reader must decide. It was, more-
over, such an unnecessary statement. The decision surely
would have been enough without the reasons.

There were in Alipore gaol, when I saw it, 2500 persons,
and with a few exceptions, of punishment, all employed in
remunerative labour. There were masons erecting build-
ings, weavers making gunny-bag cloth of jute, a factory of
jute spinners, printers, lithographers, painters, carpenters,
blacksmiths, and many other classes of workmen, all en-
gaged in task work. If they exceeded the task a small
sum was carried to their credit to be paid to them on leav-
ing gaoL An amusing story was told of a shrewd York-
shireman who, sent out " to manage a jute mill," was faced
by the reality of some hundreds of criminals not one of whom
knew anything of the work. First he despaired ; then he
hoped a little; finally he succeeded, and had a capital
jute milL Dr Faucus, governor of the prison, told me
that the men they sent out with trades hardly ever had
returned ; and there was an instance of a man whose time
had expired begging permission to remain a little longer
in gaol to more completely learn his trada It was to
my view a humane and judicious system.

Eighteen months later I visited the Presidency Gaol in
Calcutta, and the governor, Dr Mackenzie, kindly showed
me the wonders of the place. We saw, in the yard, "a mild
Bengalee," whom flogging, short diet, and even the dreaded
solitary confinement ^ke the cell of Guy Fawkes in the
Tower of London) had failed to compel to work. " He is one
of the few prisoners who ever beat me," the governor said.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 237

A hundred or so of the prisoners were breaking stones;
some were on the tread-mill, a frightful punishment
under such a sun ; some mat making, as punishment, on
very heavy looms. At this some rioters were engaged.
They had at first refused, and were taken to the tread-mill ;
refusing that they were flogged, put on short diet, sent to
the dark cells, and were at last working at the looms.

We came to a separate cell, the inmate of which was a
loose-jointed, misshapen, weakly-looking, thin-faced native
man, apparently about twenty-five years of age, though he
might, for anything one could judge, have been any age
fix)m eighteen to forty^ That, said the governor, was one of
the most daring and relentless dacoits we have ever had.
In a cell a few yards distant there was a grave and vener-
able-looking old man who had attained the very highest
grade in a different profession — that of a forger. He had
been convicted in attempting to obtain money from an
oflicer — I think the head of the police — by means of a letter
purporting to be written by Mr Eeilly, the well-known
detective. The forgery was perfect, and no one would
have disputed the letter but for one small mistake ; the
two initial letters of Mr Eeilly's Christian name were
transposed — C. J. (or something) instead of J. C. This
interesting old gentleman, questioned as to the amount
of work he had done, put his hands together gravely and
confessed that it was far short of the task. The governor
spoke sternly, and threatened short diet. Evidently the
old artist was out of his vocation of slow patient work.
When the same question was put to the dacoit he pleaded
pitifully, "Only four bags, but I'll do forty to-morrow."
Forty was the number to be sewed per day.

There were many wealthy natives among the prisoners ;
and I was sorry to find a number of English sailors and
soldiers, for deserting regiments or ships. It was impos-
sible to look upon them as criminals. They were kept
apart from the other prisoners. Some of them were very
fine fellows, who, probably, never were in prison before.

238 ENGLISH RULE AND

nor would be again. Another class was that of the
vagrants, termed " loafers." There were some very respect-
able-looking men among them, "turned away from the
railways," they said, or " brought from Australia in charge
of horses and then dismissed " — the most prolific source of
" loaferism " in India.

Six yoimg native boys were separated from the rest
They had their own yard, and each a little garden, and a
division of work. One was cook, another "housemaid,"
and so on. They were drawn up in line and questioned,
the cook first. "What are you here for?" "Murder; I
struck another boy on the head, and kUled him." "And
you?" "Murder; I threw a child into a welL" The
answers were given as if they had related to common
matters. We went no further in the list An Indian
prison is marvellous for its mixture of races. The Hindoo
cannot eat with the Mussulman. To step inside a cook-
house is to defile it even for prisoners. Yet even Brahmins,
old oflfenders, had been known to beg for the office of
" mehters " (sweepers — Slowest menials), so great was their
dread of the hard labour.

What were called the " non-habituals " were employed
as at Alipore, and taught trades where necessary. I
noticed particularly the intelligent Chinaman before re-
ferred to, busy at a lathe. I said, "^e never gave
you any trouble?" "No; he was entrapped into a rob-
bery, caught, and convicted, and he inmiediately made
the best of his position. He is a quiet, respectful, in-
telligent man." He spoke English like an Englishman.
There were several Chinamen in the prison, and all of the
same class. We came to a long line of men, seated on the
ground, engaged in hand spinning ; the fourth from one end
was old Ameer Khan, the Wahabee, referred to previously.
He was a tall man, I should say nearly seventy years of
age, stout, with flabby cheeks, a rather fine forehead, and,
as before stated, an extraordinarily furtive eye. It was, in
any case, a severe punishment On page 74 I have stated

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 239

that Ameer Khan was released on the proclamation of the
Queen as Empress, but I have since had reason to doubt
that this was so, though proposals were made for his
release.

If the prisons and police of India were judged by the
prisons and police of England, the comparison would pro-
bably lead to error. Yet I think the governors of English
gaols might find a few hints worthy of notice in India, and,
perhaps, some facts to appal them. A Bengal report
(1869-70) stated the number of prisoners at 75,751, of
whom 57 males and 8 females had been executed during
the year. In Madras, about 70, 1 found, had been sentenced
to death; in Bombay and Scinde, 49; in the Punjab, 81.
These executions are canied out as an ordinary aflfair of
life, the people remarkably well conducted. The district
surgeon certifies that the criminal has been executed.
Then the surgeon goes home to his breakfast, or perhaps
takes his wife for a morning drive. In the year referred
to above, there died in the prisons of Bengal 989 males,
and 40 females; in Madras, 250; in Bombay and Scinde,
193 males, and 4 females ; in the North Western Pro-
vinces, 420; and in the Punjab, 419. One of the tables
showed that the imprisonment of "45,319 males and 2777
females, aggregating 48,096 persons, deprived 74,590 chil-
dren of their parents; that 58,896 wives were left with-
out their husbands, who were imprisoned, and that 2489
wives were parted from their husbands for life." " What,"
the writer asked, " becomes of the great body of women
and children deprived of their natural protectors, and what
proportion of them ultimately recruit the ranks of the
social evil and criminal classes ? " There are some good
officers in India who ask these and like questions with
great earnestness of purpose.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE STORY OF OUDE AND OF THE MUTINY: SOME

INDIAN CITIES REVISITED.

At the end of 1870, fresh from the scenes of the Mutiny,
I received the second volume of Sir John Kaye's " Sepoy
War," and reviewed it in three numbers of the paper I
edited ; but with the result in my own mind, and all the
stronger because of what I had so lately seen, that I was
merely generalising upon a topic which had on all hands
living witnesses to facts. I referred, therefore, to an officer
of much experience, and he added to my articles two more
on the basis of special knowledge. From this starting-
point, with the help of much information from persons
with whom I had intercourse, I re-read the story of the
Mutiny; and twice again (in 1872 and 1874) I wandered
amid the scenes which the deeds of the Mutiny have ren-
dered memorable ; the site of Wheeler's encampment, the
Ghftt by the river, the Sacred Well, the Residency where
Lawrence fought and died and was buried, the Alumbagh
where Havelock lies; the many scenes in and around
Delhi and Agra, and Lucknow and Cawnpore. I had also
opportunities, referred to in earlier chapters, of visiting
some of the more memorable of the scenes of the campaign
of Sir Hugh Rose in Central India, and then again from
Patna, Moorshedabad, Benares, Allahabad, and elsewhere,
of viewing the different lines of action in their relation to
one great plan. It is impossible for any one passing through
these scenes to miss the undoubted fact that, having won
the palaces of Agra and Delhi and Lucknow, we have
always been utterly at a loss to know what to do with

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 241

them. As we preserve the ruins of our own abbeys, so we
preserve the Marble Palaces and the Tdj and the Imambara,
for show. We have no king for the palaces, as we have
no abbot for the abbeys ; but we have the historical faculty
beneath a levelling practical faculty, and it is our delight
to say : " See what things were in days of old."

I noticed also, however, how difficult it is for an
Englishman in the great cities of India to fully picture to
himself any period of history as he can picture that of
1857-58. Strive as one may to reach to Akbar or Nadir
Shah, it is long before the mind can extend very far be-
yond the Sepoy Mutiny. Where Lawrence, and Neill, and
Nicholson, and Hodson, and Havelock died, are the spots
one visits first, and visits last. We have no great heritage
in the palaces; we have an inalienable heritage in the
graves. It is perhaps the failing of islanders, but at all
events it is strangely real, as many Englishmen must have
found.

The keys to the action of the Mutiny, and indeed to
much of English history in India, are the Ganges and
Jumna rivers, both sacred. On these rivers are great
cities and a myriad villages, connected, as we have seen, by
boats of whose number it is scarcely possible to form an
estimate. The news that one boat brings from some one
place, a score of boats take to as many other places, and
from the bazaar of each the news spreads throughout
many districts on both sides of both rivers. It is in this
way that, by a power as of electricity, the native heralds
of intelligence have often left the English mails far behind.
We could, before the magic wire came to us with such
power for peace or war, speedily span the distance between
any two cities ; but Native India in the same time spanned
the distance between many cities and the most remote
villages. The news seemed to spread as on the wind.
In reality, it spread in a natural, and, when we see it, per-
fectly accountable way.

' If we started on the Hooglily — the Ganges — and voyaged

Q

242 ENGLISH RULE AND

upward from Calcutta, we should pass very near to Plassey,
Moorshedabad, Monghyr, Patna, and Benares. At Allaha-
bad the Jumna and the Ganges meet. If we continued
our voyage on the latter, we should pass, on our right,
Lucknow, in Oude, and on our left Cawnpore, in the
North Western Provinces. In due time we would reach
Meerut, from whence we might ride across country, a
distance of forty miles, to Delhi. By this ride we should,
moreover, have passed from the line of the Ganges to that
of the Jumna. We might then again take boat, and
voyaging down stream, with Central India (Gwalior,
Jhansi, Indore, &c.) far away on our right, come to
Agra, and so on till, passing Calpee, we again arrived at
the confluence of the two rivers at Allahabad. A line
struck across country would, we have seen, lead direct
from Delhi to Meerut. A line similarly struck from Agra
would, with some little divergence, lead to Cawnpore.
On these and like lines, on road and river, the germs of
the Mutiny were carried and recarried, till a thousand
fires smouldered where not even the smoke from a fire
was seen.

The dynasty of Oude, in the existing royal line, was not
of great antiquity ; but the throne of Oude, in Lucknow,
the chief city, was believed to be inherited from the great
Eama himself. This gave to the beautiful palaces and
baghs (gardens) a still more subtle charm to the Hindoo
mind. From the beginning of the century, however, the
dynasty of Oude had never been free from danger. The
East India Company, which cared little for the Ramayana,
began to declare to the King that his dominions were a
garden of weeds, and that the seed came over the Com-
pany's partition wall. The nobles, more feudal than the
most feudal nobles ever known in Europe, were declared
to be robbers, who from their strongholds preyed relent-
lessly upon all the country round. Fertile land, it was
said, had been purposely turned into jungle, and its in-
habitants driven away, while a licentious imbecile king

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 243

spent his days and nights shut up in his palaces, with
wives, concubines, and entertainers. Some, at least, of the
delineators of this picture were men of undoubted veracity;
men too who had no wish to see a policy of annexation.
In February 1856, Lord Dalhousie declared the kingdom
of Oude at an end ; and to one of the best men in India,
and one of the best defenders of the rights of native
dynasties. General Outram, was committed the uncon-
genial task of giving the edict effect. The King was
pensioned, as we have seen, and the ancient kingdom
of Oude became English property. We did more than
merely dethrone a king ; we degraded a whole nobility, as
men like Sir Henry Lawrence and Mr now Sir Charles
Wingfield pointed out, but pointed out in vain. All Oude
was against us ; but the germs of disaffection were as yet
beyond ordinary observation. The "great pro-consul"
had his will, and the men of Leadenball Street theirs.^

Moreover, Oude was but the last of several annexations
and forfeitures. The old Peishwa of the Mahrattas, Bajee
Eao, had been dethroned in 1818, with an allowance for
his comfort of £8o,cxx) a year, and a jageer and fortified
palace at Bithoor. In 1827, being childless, he, according
to Hindoo custom, adopted as his own the son of a Brahmin
of the Deccan, a boy named Dhundoo Punt, and educated
him as a Mahratta nobleman and heir to Bithoor. This
boy became the Nana Sahib. Bajee Eao died in 1853, and
the pension was stopped by Lord Dalhousie. The Nana

^ In referring to Lord Dalhonsie's Secondly, that the abuses and dangers

ivolicy of annexation, I of course against which the annexation policy

mean the policy of the India House, was directed were admitted by men

accepted by the nation, and have no who nevertheless opposed the policy,

wish to attempt to make one of the Lastly, that Lord Dalhousie, wearied

most powerful men ever sent by Eng- and sick, was not able to apply the

land to India the scapegoat for a policy remedial measures which his strong

which both the Directors of the Com- hand might have applied to temper a

pany and Parliament shared, and in policy which, in spite of all special

the former case had indicated. Three pleading, history will sternly con-

facts remain in Lord Dalhousie's fa- dcmn. Yet if there had been no

▼our. First, that the time had come Mutiny, the policy would have beeu

when some stem policy was needed, deemed the greatest political success.

244 ENGLISH RULE AND

swallowed his anger as best he could, gave dinners and
entertainments to the neighbouring English " Station " at
Cawnpore, smiled upon the English ladies and their
children, and nursed his hate the while to whit« heat.

I met in Cawnpore with people who believed, of course
absurdly, that in reality the Nana never met or was seen
by the people he invited ; but, so deadly was his concealed
hate, dressed up a low-caste person to represent him, and
so to degrade the Sahibs and Mem Sahibs without their
knowledge. The Nana left no stone unturned to win
back the pension. He sent as his agent to England the
clever, and afterwards relentless, Azimoolah Khan; and
the agent, although he failed in the main object of his
mission, brought back with him letters which proved to
our enraged soldiers, who found the letters at a madden-
ing time, that while in London he had stood high in the
favour of some titled English ladies. He also, having
returned by way of the Crimea, brought reports of what
he deemed the absolute collapse of the military power of
England before SebastopoL On both sides of the Ganges,
therefore, there was bitterness intense enough to rouse a
whole country. The Nana, in spite of the loss of his
pension, was still rich. That he spent money like a
prince the English of Cawnpore could testify. He was
still, too, chief of the Mahrattas ; and if he had a wrong, it
was the wrong of a warlike race, remarkable for cunning
and the power to strike swift and sure blows.

The year 1853, when Bajee Eao died, was rendered still
further memorable by the death of the Eajah of Jhansi.i
It was then discovered, and cleverly proved by clever men,
that Jhansi, having originally belonged to the Peishwa,
was English property, which the Eajah had held on
sufferance. The right of adoption in his case, therefore,
certainly could not be allowed. Since 181 8 the Company
had been kept out of its just rights in JhansL The Eajah
had, it is true, adopted a son, and so had received in the

* See Chap. VIIL

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 245

last hours of his Kfe the spiritual blessings which only
a son can give. Here, however, the privilege must end.
The right of the rulers of Jhansi to adopt, it was also
found, had previously been disputed, and that the latest
ruler had himself owed his sovereignty to that dispute in
1835. It was not discovered with the same unerring
ability that when the right of adoption was set aside in
1835, it was for the exclusion of a stranger and in favour
of the real heir of Sheo Eao Bhao, with whom we had in
1804 made a treaty declaring the territory hereditary in
his family. It was very clever, but India saw the real
fact, and when Jhansi was annexed the Government of
Lord Dalhousie might have saved itself the trouble of
defending the annexation on any other ground than that
they had taken who had the power. The Eanee's pro-
perty was sold, and bought under circumstances of dis-
• tressing high-handedness. She too nursed her "burning
wrongs."

In addition to these and other complications, there were
the royal family of Delhi, the descendants of Timour the
Tartar. The nominal sovereignty of Delhi had been left,
with a pension, to the old King, Baliadur Shah, and his
heirs. A dispute as to heirship having been removed
by the death of one of the claimants to it, the whole
question was very satisfactorily settled in 1856. Then
the princes of the royal house travelled, by permission of
the great pro-consul, winning sympathy and sowing ani-
mosity to the English. Nothing could well have been
more remarkable than that all these elements of disorder
— germs of mutiny — should have found their way to the
eyes and understandings of India on the eve of the hun-
dredth anniversary of Plassey, the date which prophets
had assigned as the end of the reign of " John Kompany."
In 1857, the little cakes, the chupatties, which an eloquent
writer, Mr Trevelyan, terms the red cross of India, were
carried from village to village by sure hands. All that

246 ENGLISH RULE AND

was needed then was some unmistakable signal that the
hour to strike had arrived.

Such was the dread situation early in 1857. Enfield
cartridges arrived from England in January, and ominous
whispers ran from rank to rank and from regiment to
regiment that the cartridges were greased with cow's and
pig's fat, to break the caste of the soldiers, as the first
step to making •them Christians — a powerful witness to
the wisdom of the Company's " latitudinarian " rule in
matters of faith. Alarming news came rapidly of cartridges
having been refused by the men at Dum-Dum and Bar-
rackpore, and indeed no one knew where, and of a dread-
ful feeling of uneasiness from Dacca to Peshawur. March
came, and there was seen in Barrackpore that strange thing,
one of the faithful sepoy regiments (the 19th) disbanded
in face of European artillerymen, match in hand. Mungul
Pandy, too, had stepped out of the ranks of the 34th at
Barrackpore, had wounded two officers on open parade
ground, and would be hanged. Where, then, had those
disciplined men of the 19th gone in boats by the Ganges
and along the great trunk road ? To Gude, some said,
where disaffection could be felt in the very air ; to Bundle-
cund, where the Company's rule of annexation had made
every man an enemy of England. To disband a regiment
for misconduct would have been little — regiments had
been so disbanded before. But here was a common cause
never before seen. The 34th, immensely the more cul-
pable regiment of the two, followed the 19th. The first
regiment had gone away with some signs of penitence ;
the second went away exultant. Sahib was now power-
less, was told in the bazaars and at the Gh^its of Lucknow
and Cawnpore and Delhi Sahib too knew, as the native
prophets knew, that his year and almost his hour had
come. Gne more step and the veil might be thrown aside.
The native troops at Meerut did what the 34th had pro-
posed to the 19th. They murdered their oflScei-s and all

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 247

English people who could be safely murdered. Thea
(May 10) they marched off to Delhi.

General Hewitt commanded a strong English force at
Meerut, and had power to give a good account of the mu-
tineers ; but General Hewitt was paralysed with the weight
of his responsibility, and the mutineers had a pleasant
night march, their cavalry trotting jubilantly into Delhi a
little after daybreak next morning. Delhi rose to the
grand news. The King was saluted. The Europeans,
men, women, and childi'en, were dragged to the great street
of Delhi, the Chandnee Chouk, and there, in the presence
of some of the Princes of Delhi, were murdered. The royal
city of the Moguls was no longer British. The last point
— the arsenal — had been blown up by its eight heroic
defenders, some of whom escaped ; all of whom, living or
dead, told of the true, and only true, refuge of England in
this her time of mortal extremity — her fearless spirit, her
unyielding resolution to death. Men who shuddered at
responsibility might return home, if not too late. Those
who remained, women as well as men, must gird up their
loins for such a fiery trial as only comes at rare intervals
to any race of mankind.

General Anson, commander-in-chief, hurried from Simla
to recapture Delhi, ^vhich Sir John Lawrence, Chief Com-
missioner of the Punjab, had telegraphed him must be
taken. General Anson died at Kumaul on the seven-
teenth day after the outbreak at Meerut. Sir Henry
Barnard assumed the command, and, joined by Brigadier
Wilson from Meerut, marched direct upon Delhi at the
head of 4000 mostly British men. The two brave Law-
rences, sons of a gallant soldier, had differed strongly in
the Punjab in a bygone time, and Lord Dalhousie had
supported Sir John. They would differ no more, even to
the end. The Commissioner in the Punjab, finding his
sepoys dropping off, enrolled Sikhs. Chiefs and people,
they flocked to him, the man whose pulse beat as calmly as
ever, now that the clouds were black as pitch. Sir Henry

248 ENGUSH RULE AND

had been a short time at Lucknow, Chief Commissioner of
Oude, Lord Canning's selected man ; designated, too, if he
lived and Lord Canning died or was incapacitated for
work, to wield the highest power in India under the Queen.

Ko man had done more than Sir Henry Lawrence to
improve the position of the sepoys, and to rectify the in-
justice that fell alike upon nobles and private persons with
the annexation of Oude. He had a handful of men and a
few guns in the cantonment. He fortified the Eesidency,
and a building above it, the Muchee Bhawn. He would
not, he said, fall back upon Allahabad ; he would defend
Lucknow. The month of June came. Sepoys from Aligurh,
from Mynpoorie, from Nusseerabad, from BareUly, from
Peshawur, were converging joyfully upon Delhi, to serve
" the King." At Futteghur, a great station, i66 persons,
merchants, civil officers, and others, including many poor
ladies and children, embarked (June 4) for Cawnpore;
sure to be well received — the Nana was so princely and so
kind. About 126 of them reached Cawnpore on the 12th ;
four days after the Nana had opened fire on General
Wheeler's entrenchment. The poor fugitives felt then that
they had come to doom, as tbey had. Those left at Fut-
teghur prepared for a siege, the memory of which would
remain to their honour and the honour of the English
name.

Sir Hugh Wheeler was at Cawnpore, confident in the
Nana's loyalty, and trustful to the last to the faithful
sepoys, to- whom he had been as a father, and a daughter
of whose race he had married. On 4th June the faithful
sepoys prepared for a gladsome march to Delhi. They
had even begun their march, when the Nana, who now
saw the possibility of a Mahratta dynasty, stopped them,
and brought them back, together with the himian scum of
many districts, to where General Wheeler was entrenched.
The entrenchment was 250 yards square, surrounded by a
mud wall, over which children might have leaped at play ;
a wall which you still may trace, and which, with the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 249

trench behind it, only gave a cover of five feet. There
were now nearly 1000 people with Sir Hugh Wheeler,
including 200 soldiers, gallant men of the 32nd and 84th
Foot, and of the Eoyal Artillery. Three hundred women;
children, and sick persons were crowded into two small
buildings at the middle of the entrenchment, and which
had been entered on the 21st May, amid fearful fore-
bodings which one poor lady in her agony chronicled for
all time. The combatants remained under canvas. All,
civilians and soldiers alike, were combatants. Fire was
opened by the Nana on 8th June. Attempts to break
into the entrenchment were beaten back, and the assailants
scattered like chaff before the wind. Provisions, however,
would not last long ; and for water the gauntlet of musketry
must be run to a well at the far side of the entrenchment,
over an open space which, long before the end. could only
be traversed by night. Ladies who a month previously
had been in possession of all the luxuries of Indian life
were now exposed to an Indian June sun, and in sight
by day of a maddened mob, like the sea in number, and
all night through in the hearing of ceaseless cries for
vengeance.

Walking over this sacred ground in company with an
officer fresh to India, but not to the service, it was a matter
of after remark between us that conversation had unwit-
tingly fallen to a whisper. " There they went for water."
" There they conveyed their dead by night." There they
stood — 2CX) fighting men — ever growing fewer, against, in
the end, 10,000 men who had been soldiers, yet who never
once dared to charge this forlorn hope of England. " Here
they came out for the last fatal march." The women, one
writer says, suffered terribly. " Some went mad, some
sought death, some behaved like angels." The noise and
revelry and musketry ceased not day nor night.

General Wheeler and the men learned by degrees the
hopelessness of their isolation. The banks of the river
above and below Cawnpore were so carefully watched, that

250 ENGLISH RULE AND

even if Sir Henry Lawrence could have spared help from
Lucknow, and the relief could have reached the Oude side
of the river, the attempt to cross must have been fataL
Lucknow was itself besieged. Mr Colvin, Lieutenant
Governor of the North Western Provinces, was shut up
in the old red sandstone fort at Agra. The Eanee of
Jhansi, after besieging the European residents of Jhansi
for four days in the palace fort, had induced them to sur-
render, and then (June 8th) had cut them down, seventy-
five in all, to the last man, woman, and child. The Gwa-
lior contingent, young Maharajah Scindia's force in aid
of the British, was either in mutiny or on the eve of
mutiny. The fugitives from Futteghur and elsewhere who
had fallen into the Nana's hands numbered about 136,
who had been slain in some cases, and "reserved" in others.
The King of Delhi had been proclaimed successor of the
Moguls. The Nana had assumed the headship which he
claimed of right over the Mahrattas. Such was the intel-
ligence carried in, scrap by scrap, often with exaggerations,
to the doomed garrison of Cawnpore.

On the 24th June, Mrs Greenway, a poor lady, wretch-
edly clad, and with a baby in her arms, arrived at the en-
trenchment with a message from the Nana. She was one
of a family who were said to have paid the Nana £30,000
for their lives, which after all were sacrificed. She was
the bearer of the Nana's oflTer to permit all of the garrison
who were not concerned in Lord Dalhousie's proceedings
to go to Allahabad ; and the offer was accepted. On the
26th a few officers strolled down to the river side to see
that the promised boats were ready. On the 27th a long
line of tattered woe-begone people wandered in the same
direction, with such precautions as could be taken against
treachery. They entered a shallow gorge, now like a small
dried-up watercourse, and were pressed upon and sepa-
rated by a vast crowd, conscious of some great treat in
store. Some were at once slain. General Wheeler, who
had come down wounded in a palanquin, was ordered to

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 25 1

leave it, and was murdered, perhaps in mercy, before he
had well touched the ground. The head of the line reached
the Ghat, to find the boats aground, and the people around
eager and laughing. Women and children, all must wade
through the mud and water ; a slight trial compared with
many, but dismal nevertheless. They waded. Some reached
the boats, some were in the water, some at the Gh&t,
when the thatched roofs of the boats were seen to be on
fire. At the same time volleys from carbines, muskets, and
guns planted on the river bank were poured upon them.
About 450 had marched down to the river that morning ;
in the evening 163 women and children remained close
prisoners of the Nana. Four men only — Captain Mowbray
Thompson, Lieutenant Delafosse, and Privates Murphy
and Sullivan — after perils of a hundred kinds, escaped by
the river and the river banks to tell the sad story of
Cawnpore. To Captain, now Colonel, Thompson refer-
ences are made in other chapters. I had some difficulty,
when I saw him, in fully understanding that the quiet
gentlemanly officer was the hero of these fearful adven-
tures, the story of which will be read in generations to
come in his own narrative.

The Nana had now in his possession 163 women and
children of the survivors of Cawnpore, and about 47 left
of those from Futteghur and elsewhere. The men had
been at once put to death. The prisoners were confined
in one house, close to another in which, from the 27th of
June to the 15 th of July, the Nana at intervals held high
revel, with music and festivity, fancying himself a real
king. The known horrors of that imprisonment were
dreadful. Havelock, however, was at hand, sweeping the
rebel forces before him ; and in the dusk of the evening of
the 15 th, five men entered the prison-house sabre in hand,
and did not leave it again till dark. For a time, Mr
Trevelyan tells us in a story which no one ever need re-tell,
there were screams and the sounds of struggling. When
the ruffians had left and closed the doors, nothing was

252 ENGLISH RULE AND

heard but a low dismal moaning, which continued all
night through. Three hours or so after sunrise next morn-
ing, the bodies were dragged over a piece of waste desert
ground, and thrown into an old well. On the same day
the Nana was defeated by Havelock. On the following
day (the 17th), Havelock entered Cawnpore. I have not
related these bare general facts from any morbid wish to
dwell upon them or revive the sad story, but because it is
necessary to account for the spirit which for several months
from this time animated both the English army and the
English nation.

On a part of the site of Wheeler's entrenchment there
is now a beautiful Memorial Church ; and near to where
our countrymen and countrywomen strove in that mortal
agony which God alone fuUy knows, I heard an earnest
and good sermon from the words, " When ye pray, say,
Our Father ; " and a choir composed of soldiers and their
little boys sang the hymn "Abide with me." The preacher
explained that " our " was all humanity, and " Father," the
Father of all. Near to where the women and children were
slain the Bank of Bengal now stands ; and there, with the
Memorial Gardens in front, on my last visit, I wrote out
some of these notes of Cawnpore. The gardens which
cover the once desert, weed-grown piece of ground are pre-
served in admirable order, and you are informed as you
enter that you must drive slowly. No rule is needed to
remind any one that it beseems the place to speak in a low
tone, to forget for the time to smile, or that it is incum-
bent upon men to stand bare-headed at the sacred well.
It is good also to remember, standing there in view of
Baron Marochetti's great creation — the sweet mournful
face of the angel in whose hands are the crossed palm
leaves of peace over the dead — in view too of the many
well-chosen texts, entwined as it were around the monu-
ment, from the Book of the Christian's God, that there was
a noble faithfulness never properly recorded on the part
of many of the Hindoos ; that the rising was military, not

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 253

popular ; and that when the story can be told from the
point of view of Native India, for every act of barbarity
there will be set off many acts of mercy, devotion, and
loyalty even to death on the part of the people,^ and acts
also, on the part of Englishmen, in which innocent persons
were made to pay the penalty for the guilty.^ Passing
from the now sacred well, you might visit other equally
sacred parts of this God's Acre ; some places where bands
of heroes died ; several where heroes are buried.

Cawnpore is once more a flourishing station, with fine
markets for the produce of the North Western Pro-
vinces, and a trade representing great wealth. I crossed
the river therefrom one morning with a party of people
on their way to a ball at Lucknow, forty miles distant.
The toll of the bridge of boats was a rupee. We had then
a railway train, which travelled at the rate of fifteen miles
an hour through some very peaceful scenes, and there was
ample time to remember that it was the self-same ground
over which Havelock, Neill, Outram, and Sir Colin Camp-
bell passed in 1857-58. The contrast was sufficiently
striking — " the relief of Lucknow," and a Lucknow balL

To illustrate the existing native life of Cawnpore, and
with it one other feature of Indian native life generally,
I recur to what I saw in Cawnpore of a great cotton
market, one of the most notable in India, The market
was held in an immense square, which at an early hour

1 I do not bcre refer merely to the Englishman from stating this, or
conduct of ])rince8 and chiefs, of Englishmen from facing it as a sober
which something has been said in truth. If any one would write a
previous chapters, but to that of faithful military history of India,
numbers of the people whose names with a special view to showing on
never were heard of. The Mutiny how many fields and under what
was inilit^iry ; but around the sepoys circumstiuices of danger Englishmen
clustered all the floating vagabondism and natives of India have stood
and rii9cality of the districts, with a shoulder to shoulder, and how loyally
certain amount of real worth which the latter had acted, England would
race feeling or our own unwise action be surprised at the facts adduced,
had carried into rebellion. The ' I know a Mohammedan gentle-
people generally, however, were cer- man, now high in the favour of the
tainly not barbarous. No feeling Government, who was within a hairs-
of nationality ought to prevent an breadth of losing his life in 1857.

254 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

in the morning waa almost densely crowded with men
and women, donkeys, horses, bullocks, camels, and gharries
or other conveyances ; a scene of barter of all manner of
commodities, on every side, and on a large scale. Around
the square were those low warehouses, the Indian "go-
down," filled with cotton, the property, in some cases, of
very wealthy persons, whom, however, it was impossible to
distinguish, by their dress, from the poorest clerk. An
eagerness for barter in some cases, an apparent careless*
ness as to sales in others ; purchases made by the mani-
pulation of fingers without speech; a market containing
what many districts of the North Western Provinces could
produce, and of what the representatives of one of the
greatest industries of England, and one of the growing
industries of India, were there to buy. Of course one felt
certain that in that great mass of human life there must
be many persons wliose memories carried them back to
1857; but the subject is little talked of. The busy life
of to-day covers the deeds of the past ; and the residents
of Cawnpore seem scarcely conscious of the feeling of
relief with which a stranger turns away to other scenes.

CHAPTER XX.

LUCKNOW DURING THE MUTINY AND AFTERWARDS:

THE LESSONS OF 1 857.

While General Wlieeler and his little band were struffdinff
in Cawnpore, like a crew of castaway sailors on a frail raft
in a tempestuous sea, Sir Henry Lawrence was defending
the lives of many helpless people, and the honour of
England, in Lucknow. On the last day of June he
advanced from the city to meet a large body of mutineers,
reported to be approaching. At the moment of action his
native artillerymen cut their traces, and went over to the
enemy. The day was lost. The commander, prostrate,
but not wounded, was carried away on a gun-carriage to
the beleaguered city. The Muchee Bhawn was now given
up; the Eesidency itself was the utmost that could be
defended. On the 2d July Sir Henry was struck by a
shell, and mortally wounded. From that time till the 4th
his words were treasured up by brave men, whom he
besought to hold out to the last, and never to make terms.
To the Nana, however, must be ascribed the production
of the weightiest argument for no surrender, when he
ordered the politically insane massacre at Cawnpore. No
one could resist that argument. "God help the poor
women and children ! " and tlien, in a low voice (and as if
in seK-communing), " Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried
to do his duty; may God have mercy upon him! "are
among the sentences which remain as pictures of this one
more of the favourite heroes of England. These last
words were accepted as his epitaph, and written upon his
tomb. Colonel Inglis, Mr Gubbins, Lieutenants Hardinge

256 ENGLISH RULE AND

and Chartcris, Dr Fayrer, and others, were left behind, to
also make for themselves monuments in Lucknow. But
to where Lawrence received the Lord's Supper, amid a
storm of shot and shell, an Englishman looks as he looks
on the cockpit of the " Victory."

In the Punjab, meanwhile, a mighty power — heroism,
too — was rising, as the Brahmapootra rises in the rains.
Sir John Lawrence was marshalling the Sikhs, and push-
ing them onward to Delhi General Sydney Cotton,
Colonel John Nicholson, Brigadier Neville Chamberlain,
and others, had decided upon a movable column, de-
stined to be memorable. Brigadier Chamberlain, under
whom the column was at first placed, was required at
Dellii, and John Nicholson had the command. On the
14th August Brigadier Nicholson, having previously
scoured the country, and made his name as terrible in
war as it had been loved in peace, marched into the camp
at Delhi, with flags flying and drums beating ; very cheer-
ing, it is recorded, especially to those of the men who had
arrived before Delhi on the 4th June, and on the 8th had
won that position behind the famous Ridge, from the shel-
ter of which great deeds had already been done, but which,
after all, had appeared not unlike a place besieged rather
than the camp of the besiegers ; save when Captain Hod-
son had undertaken to clear the country, or when an action
had been fought to secure some military end, or as a warn-
ing of what was to come. General Barnard had at this
time been dead more than a month, and Brigadier Wilson
commanded.

At three o'clock on the morning of the 14th September,
three columns stood ready for the spring. Brigadier
Nicholson to attack the Cashmere bistiou; Brigadier
Jones, the water bastion ; Colonel Campbell, the Cashmere
gate. Other columns were in reserve. For six long days
the fighting continued in the narrow streets. No quarter
was given to men with arms. The enemy fought desper-
ately, and cleverly left liquor in the men's way as a snare.

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 257

Delhi, however, was won. Hodson had made his way to
the Jumma Musjid. The strongest bastions and gates had
been stormed. Not an armed mutineer was to be seen
within the city. But John Nicholson, among other brave
men, had fallen. Wounded on the 14th, he lived till the
23d, and was then laid with mournful solemnity in a new
burial-ground near the Cashmere Gate of Delhi. An in-
telligent native guide who went with me over this burial-
ground, and who had given to every other of the renowned
dead the proper designation of his rank, said, " That is
John Nicholson." It was the most touching of all, for
one had learned before this that " John Nicholson " was
a name beloved by many of the native peoples.

About three miles from Delhi on the Agra road is
the tomb of Humayoon, the father of Akbar ; a fine domed
building, and, like nearly all great Mohammedan palaces
and tombs, standing in a spacious walled enclosure, almost
like a city, and laid out as a garden. To this tomb the King
and his family had fled. On the 21st September Captain
Hodson appeared at the gates with fifty men, and in the
end took away the King, Queen, and a young son, whose
lives he guaranteed. Next day he repeated the daring
act with a hundred of his own troopers, and took away the
two princes, the murderers, unless history is at fault, of
the Chandnee Chouk. The road was crowded with armed
mutineers, jmd Hodson, believing, as he said, that he never
could take his prisoners into the city, shot them. Sir John
Kaye in his latest work asserts that they could have been
taken into the city, Hodson and Lieutienant Macdowell
solemnly affirmed that they could not, and one would not
like, without direct proof, to disbelieve them. If the act
were other than purely military, it was undoubtedly
wrong ; but Sir John Kaye gives no reason why Captain
Hodson's word should be disbelieved.

Of Delhi itself a volume might be written. As a mere
sight it is marvellous. Looking from the Eidge you have
spread out before you a city with bastioned walls which

R

258 ENGUSH RULE AND

have a circuit of seven miles, and with many gates, in
almost each case memorable for something; and with a
forest of cupolas and minarets, the white and red stone
intermingling, and in both cases relieved by the never-
failing dark or bright-green foliage. A little outside you
are pointed to the Flagstaff Tower, where the magazine was
blown up in May 1857, our first victory, because the first
marked indication of our resolve to die rather than sur-
render to the mutineers. Inside is the beautiful mosque,
the Jumma Musjid, and the royal palace, with the fort^
the scenes of the glories of many generations. The fort
has one of its sides to the Jumna, and from another looks
upon the Chandnee Chouk, a street which, in its width and
the almost illimitable variety of trades, private houses, shops,
gardens, tombs, temples, and assemblages of all manner
of men, may be said to stand alone among thoroughfares.
The palace is a little city, with walls, gates, and other
defences. In it are those wonders in marble of which
travellers love to tell — ^the hall of white marble, inlaid with
curious devices of precious stones, the filagree work and
perforated walls, dumb witnesses of those times when the
renowned peacock throne was the judgment-seat of the
Moguls.

Ascending a long flight of broad and imposing steps,
covered with worshippers, you come to a rocky plateau
and a large quadrangle, at one side of which stands the
great mosque, relieved by chaste little buildings of white
marble, which in turn are relieved by red stone. Looked at
either within or without, the Jumma Musjid is beautiful.
A marble fountain without for the ablutions of the myriad
worshippers corresponds with a marble pulpit within, on
a floor of white marble with jet borders. Tlie general
effect is most imposing, and it is not difi&cult to see, from
the mere presence of the countless worshippers, that the
Mussulman faith, in a land where it has been conquered,
has still a use for its great churches.

Four days before the assault had been delivered at Delhi,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 259

Brigadier Greathead, with another memorable column, had
dispersed the rebels in the neighbourhood of Agra ; but a
day earlier Lieutenant Governor Colvin had died. It has
been questioned whether Agra was ever in any serious
danger so long as Lucknow and Delhi were the centres of
operations which kept the rebels so fully employed. But in
the great fort there is a tombstone testifying, on the word
of " a devoted wife/' that Mr Colvin died from the effects
of his unremitting labour. I asked a gentleman who was
in Agra during all the period of the Mutiny, if other evi-
dence agreed with this. He said, " Yes, thoroughly. Mr
Colvin was one of the finest men I ever saw." The fort of
Agra is, as we have seen, of red stone, and, like that at
Delhi, it commands both the river and the town. In
front of it, on one side you are pointed to a busy crowded
street, at the end of which the King of Delhi was pro-
claimed while English children were playing on the
marble floors of the palace of Akbar. The throne of
Akbar, the grandest judgment-seat in the world, is here
the central object among the treasures of a marble palace,
or rather, as it seems, of a series of marble palaces, which
compare with those of Delhi as the bright streets of
Paris compare with the solid, sombre streets of London.
Whether we take the palaces, or the Tomb of Humayoon
and the TSj Mehal, the contrast is the same : in Delhi, solid
beauty ; in Agra, a fairy creation, or, as some one has said,
" poetry in stone." Among the other treasures of the fort
are the sandalwood gates which Lord Ellenborough removed
from Ghuznee to restore to the temple at Somnath, but
which he was glad at last to leave at Agra.

There is one exquisite little palace, with a temple also,
built by the Mussulman Emperor Jehdngir for a Hindoo
wife — a lesson in toleration from a time when Europe
could no more have comprehended such an act than it
could have laid an Atlantic telegraph cable. A Christian
king would have insisted on his wife becoming Christian.
The Mohammedan — the "idol-breaker" — ^was content that

26o ENGLISH RULE AND

liis wife should remain Hindoo. The streets of Agra are
crooked, narrow, and crowded, and the lofty houses are, in
many cases, especially of the old ones, elaborately carved.
The skilled artisan is there at his work, as his forefathers
were at their work, in the same kind of shops, on the same
spots, generations ago. The verandahs, from which people
look down upon the Englishman to-day as he drives
slowly through streets which could only be driven through
more rapidly at the risk of life, are the same as those
from which other people looked upon very difTerent scenes
^hen very different races ruled in Agra,

At a little distance from the city is the Taj Mehal,
which every one who has visited it has described, and in
which so many different persons have seen so many fresh
beauties. Twenty thousand workmen are said to have
been twenty years building it, at a cost of £750,000, the
tribute of Shah Jehan, who had fabulous wealth, to his
beautiful wife. Outside is a plain, intentionally, perhaps,
kept as a miniature desert. Then you enter an enclosure,
the walls of which are red stone, and the interior a
choice garden. In the centre is the Taj, a palace of red
stone, inlaid with marble and precious stones, and sur-
mounted by a dome, the grace and proportions of wliich,
and the reliefs of which, have, as far as I know, been gene-
rally pronounced matchless. Seen from the fort, the Taj,
with the bright sun shining upon it, cannot well be
better described than as a fairy palace. When nearer
to it, the view formed at a distance is confirmed. When
within, and you see beneath the graceful dome, itself
spangling with precious stones, the inlaid tombs, whatever
doubt you might have of the first conception vanishes.
The more the points of view from which you look at it,
the greater number of beauties you perceive. Analyse it,
and perhaps you might be a little disappointed. It is like
the peculiar sweetness and beauty seen at times on a
female face, and which you cannot reduce by any analysis
to its component parts. Compared with the Tomb of

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 261

Humayoon, the Taj presents a contrast in some respects
as if the two were of different lands, though not so great
a contrast as either presents to the Egyptian pyramids.

Delhi and Agra are alike Hindoo at the base, but
Mohammedan in what are now known to Europe as their
leading characteristics. Their fate, often diverging, often
united, became one under the greater of the great Moguls.
A heavy intellect was displaced by a lighter, and the
purely reflective and self-communing spirit by one which
rose buoyant to every fresh impulse in East and West,
from as far westward indeed as the extreme limit of the
conquests of the Moors. That India gained by the terrible
inroads of the Mohammedans, the Hindoo is hardly yet
prepared to admit ; and no wonder, when he sees every
footstep marked with blood ; but that such is the fact no
candid outside observer can doubt. The Mussulman, not
the Englishman, or the strictly European of any name,
broke the spell of ages, and laid India open to the march
of new ideas ; redeemed her, in fact, from the isolation of
China. And he received intellectual benefit from her in
return. The Mohammedan, moreover, though a foreigner
and an intruder, strove to become native. He built as one
rooted to the soiL The Taj and the Tomb of Humayoon
will, judging by human principles, survive all such works
as the " Arthur Crawford Markets " in Bombay, or the
Law Courts in Calcutta, though they may not, and we may
well hope will not, survive the civilisation which these
represent. What, however, is the impression the reader
would gather from a comparison of the massive pyramids
as the type of Egypt, the Buddhist topes and monasteries,
as a type of the age when Hindooism was threatened with
reform, and the Taj Mehal, representing the impulses of a
hotter blood and a graver purpose than that of India, in
that great dawn of a new popular life in the age of the
Commonwealth in England ? At this stage of this simple
recital of facts, not, I hope, overweighted with reflections
on facts, perhaps the reader may see far more than the

262 - ENGLISH RULE AND

writer of the inner part and thing signified in the contrast
of the pyramids and the TSj Mehal.

Recurring to the Mutiny, we shall not be likely to over-
look the fact that while to Delhi the attention of England
was directed as the backbone of the rebellion, on Lucknow
it was fixed with the still deeper interest of women and
children whom any hour might consign to the fate of those
of Cawnpore. On the I2th August, a month before the
assault on Delhi, and a month after the massacre of the
women and children at Cawnpore, Colonel Inglis stated
his force to General Havelock as numbering 350 Europeans
and 300 natives, in charge of 220 women, 230 children,
and 120 sick. His provisions might last till September;
but the enemy, he said, " are mining in all directions ;
their eighteen-pounders are within 1 50 yards of some of
our batteries, and from their position, and our inability to
form working parties, we cannot reply to them." The
Gwalior men were also in the field. Let us now see how
and from whence the relief was coming.

The Mutiny found Colonel Neill in Madras, newly
arrived from England, and preparing to follow Sir James
Outram, under whom was Havelock, to the war in Persia.
This, however, was now countermanded, and Colonel
NeQl was ordered with his Madras Fusiliers to Calcutta,
whence he started at once with a column for the scene of
danger. On the 3d June he was at Benares — the first
indication of help from outside of the mutinous districts.
Benares was at the time in imminent danger, but Neill
saved it, and made liis hand so heavily felt that the heart
of the Mutiny was as it were plucked out so far as related
to the sacred city of the Hindoos. He then marched
direct to Allahabad, and in a series of fierce and almost
unceasing actions, from the 9th to the 13th June, effec-
tually crushed out the rebellion in that capital of the
North Western Provinces. There had a short time pre-
viously been a cruel massacre in Allahabad, and Neill
therefore gave no quarter to men in arms. Having rescued

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 263

this important militaiy station, he (June 30th) despatched
Major Eenaud, with 4CX) Fusiliers, yyo Sikhs, and two
guns to the relief of Cawnpore, intending himself to
follow speedily.

Havelock, returning (May 29th) from the Persian ex-
pedition, at the head of which Outram remained, received
at Bombay the first intelligence of the doings at Meerut,
and of the ride of the mutineers to Delhi On 1st June
he embarked for Calcutta. He was shipwrecked at Ceylon,
then very narrowly escaped being promoted back to Bom-
bay. He did, however, escape — thanks to the Madras
Commander-in-chief, Sir Patrick Grant — and went on to
Calcutta. On the way he expressed a calm but strong
opinion against disbanding any more mutinous regiments.
He would attack, and, if necessary, annihilate them. Ap-
pointed to the conmiand of the movable column at Alla-
habad, he pushed on at once to his duty ; and on 30th
June, almost immediately after the departure of Major
Eenaud, General Neill was superseded, and an order sent
after Benaud directing him to halt and await the main
force at Futteghur. This order, the beginning of a painful
misunderstanding between Havelock and Neill, was much
criticised at the time, and has been so ever since ; but sub-
sequent events showed to all fair reasoners that it was the
right course. If Eenaud had advanced on Cawnpore, his
little force almost certainly would have been cut to pieces,
as a force sent a little later from Dinapore to the relief of
the House at Arrah, defended by sixteen Englishmen and
fifty Sikhs, was destroyed.

In 1872 I heard the story of this siege related by one
of the besieged, with some interjectional help from the
narrator's wife, who had been sent to Dinapore for safety.
The gentleman himself (prior to the Mutiny a schoolmaster)
had elected with others to wait for the mutineers at this
house at Arrah, which they fortified as best they could.
At Dinapore the lady learned, truly, that 400 men sent
to the relief of the little party had been almost anni-

264 ENGLISH RULE AND

hilated. At Arrah the schoolmaster learned, untruly,
that Dinapore had been captured and all the Europeans
massacred. The garrison at Arrah, commanded by Mr
Boyle, an engineer, slept in turn, and maintained so strict
a watch and so hot a fire that the mutineers were arrested
in their progress for a full week. The gallant little
garrison was relieved by Major Vincent Ejrre, who, start-
ing with a mere handful of men, augmented to 200 on the
march, defeated 2500 of the disciplined men of three native
regiments. Major Eenaud would probably have shared
the fate of the force from Dinapore. Still he was an able
soldier; and looking on his force as an advance one, Neill
following speedily, the plan, as against that of Havelock,
involved a mere difference of opinion; and, as far as
any one could determine at the time, either plan might
have succeeded or failed, though to succeed the man who
planned would have had to carry the plan into effect It
was only by the light of what occurred afterwards that a
conclusive opinion can be formed, that if Eenaud had not
halted at Futteghur he must have halted somewhere short
of Cawnpore.

The march of General Havelock began on 7th July, with
a force, including Eenaud's, of 20CO men, Europeans and
Sikhs, a company of Eoyal Artillery, and fifty horse. In
eight days he marched 126 miles, and fought four engage-
ments, driving the enemy everywhere before him. On
the 17th he made that mournful entry into Cawnpore, to
find only an empty house of death and a terrible grave.
Neill, with about 200 men, arrived on the 20th, and was
left in command at Cawnpore, while Havelock himself
(25 th July) crossed the Ganges. He advanced five miles
on the Lucknow road to Mungulwar, and halted to secure
his supplies. On the 29th, after a march of three more
miles, he met and defeated the enemy crushingly at Oonao.
Another march of six miles brought him (the same day) to
Busseeruthgunge, a walled town, where the mutineers had
halted. The road lay direct through the town. The gate

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 265

was battered down by artillery, and the way cleared by a
charge.

The force, however, was now reduced to 1200 men, and
hearing that the Nana was advancing to cut of communi-
cation with Cawnpore, Havelock fell back on Mungul-
war. He wrote in explanation to Neill, and urged him to
spare no effort to send forward fresh men as fast as they
arrived, and to keep the bridge open. Neill, who had been
investigating the circumstances of the massacre of Cawn-
pore, and, half mad with rage, pouring vengeance like
molten lead on the heads of all guilty and of many sus-
pected persons, replied in a sharp letter, urging an imme-
diate advance. Havelock wrote back very sternly, and did
not move till August 4th. On the 6th he again defeated
the enemy at Busseeruthgunge. Cholera now appeared in
the relieving army, and the Nana threatened a flank attack,
while the Gwalior men, with great reinforcements, not
merely bade fair to overwhelm Neill at Cawnpore, but, by
an advance on Calpee, to cut off the communication with
Allahabad. The position was terrible, and Neill saw it.
He was threatened from Bithoor, twelve miles distant, and
from Futteghur, seven miles distant, besides in his com-
munication with Allahabad. He frankly admitted his in-
ability to hold the position. Havelock again, therefore,
fell back upon the river; but finding that he could not
cross it with an enemy on his flank as well as in his rear,
he fought another battle, and, driving the enemy back, re-
crossed to Cawnpore. He had been nineteen days on the
Oude side of the Ganges, and had won eight battles. He now
won another at Bithoor, and put a final end to the Nana's
reign there. Eetuming to Cawnpore, he found in a copy
of the " Gazette of India " a notification that he was super-
seded in the command by Sir James Outram, who arrived
on the 1 6th September with 14CX) men, but refused the
command till Lucknow had been relieved.

On the 19th and 20th the river was recrossed with an
army of 2500 men. On the 23d the army was at the

266 ENGLISH RULE AND

Alumbagh (palace and garden), in sight of Lucknow. A
fierce battle cleared the way ; and on the 2Sth the assault
was made through two miles of narrow lanes, Neill leading
with his headlong valour. He had waited for the signal
of battle like a war-horse, and had, it was afterwards told,
laughed a beautiful laugh when he heard Captain Olpherts
call out to his men, " The sound of your guns is music to
the ladies of Lucknow." Close to the Eesidency Neill fell,
a glorious victor that day. He was buried at night, and
the whole anny mourned for him as for a fearless loyal
soldier. It will be observed here that while Havelock,
Outram, and Neill were crossing the Ganges, Nicholson
and those other bands of heroes were storming Delhi. On
the capture of Lucknow Outram assumed the command,
and was himself besieged by the men through whose vast
numbers Havelock and he had cut their way.

Sir Colin Campbell, however, had now arrived, and had
hastened to Cawnpore. On November 9th he advanced
on Lucknow with 5CXX) men of all arms and thirty guns,
leaving General Windham of the " Eedan " to guard the
bridge over the river. Part of the troops were of the men
intended for China ; part were of Greathead*s column from
Agra ; part were PeeFs Naval Brigade. Sir Colin reached
the Alumbagh without much difl&culty ; and a civil officer,
disguised as a n.ative, running the gauntlet of the enemy
with the key to a semaphore telegraph, a communication
was at once opened. On the 14th November Sir Colin's
march began. By means of a detour through some of the
beautiful groves of Lucknow, the sepoy defences were
avoided. A ptOrk and a fortified building, the Martini^re,
were captured after a fierce fight. Then Sir Colin rested
for the night, to the dismay of the garrison, who had
expected an assault Uke an avalanche. In the morning
the men were under arms betimes. The Secunderbagh
crossed the path or threatened their progress. It was a
garden with lofty loopholed walls, flanked with towers, and
in the centre of the enclosure there was a house of two

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 267

storeys, in both cases loopholed, and filled with sepoys.
The fight raged here for three hours with small advantage.
At last two breaches were made at two opposite angles,
and the 93d Highlanders and the 4th Punjabees were
ordered to storm. They stormed — the men who had seen
the well of Cawnpore — and when they left that awful
garden, 2000 of the mutineers lay dead on the ground.
Hardly a man escaped — one of the fearfulest deeds of
any known to modern times. When I saw the Secunder-
bagh, it was covered with weeds, and was very desolate
looking.

A little further was the Shah Nujeef, a domed mosque
in a garden. The place was immensely strong, and was
gallantly defended, but it must be taken. Sir Colin him-
self led the 93d, after Captain Feel had cannonaded
for two hours with the guns of his Naval Brigade close
to the very walls. The Shah Nujeef was stormed with
tremendous slaughter. Another day's work was done.
Next day the gtms from the relieving force and from
the Eesidency blended in one united roar, till the
garrison and their deliverers met in a scene which
will remain one of the grand tableaux of English his-
tory. The eity, however, remained in the hands of the
enemy; and Sir Colin was compelled to leave it so.
Affecting to assail the Kaiserbagh, he quietly removed
the women and children to the Secunderbagh. Then he
retired successfully on the Alumbagh, and leaving Outram
there with 4000 men, directed his steps once more to the
Ganges' bank. He arrived at Cawnpore in time, but only
in time, to save General Windham, who, with i2CO men,
had been defeated by Tantia Topee, with a great army, of
which the Gwalior's men were the nucleus, and whose
little force was on the way to being as efiectually fastened
and destroyed as ever fly was in a spider's web. The
enemy was dispersed in headlong route, and the Nana's
property at Bithoor was then utterly swept away by
Brigadier Hope Grant. Sir Colin proposed now to conquer

268 ENGLISH RULE AND

Eohilcund, but Lord Canning, who was at Allahabad, urged
the moral efifect of the complete conquest of Lucknow.

On the 1st February the Ganges was again crossed, now
with 18,700 Europeans and native troops, while Sir Hugh
Eose, with his Bombay column, was advancing on the
way to Jhansi. Lord Canning, to Sir Colin's disgust, was
anxious that Sir Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul, who had pro-
mised to assist with 10,000 men, should share in the
attack. This caused delay, without much satisfaction to
any one. Outram, during the absence of his chief, had
had hard fighting at the Alumbagh, and Havelock was no
more. Attacked with dysentery soon after the second
relief of Lucknow, he died on the 24th, just as Sir Colin
was leaving for Cawnpore. He was buried in the Alum-
bagh, in a spot now very green and very peaceful, and no
English traveller entering the great garden will easily
leave again without being offered a flower " from Have-
lock Sahib's grave." In my own case the gardener, " all
eyes," but gentle withal, waited till I had read and re-
read the rather too long inscription, written when every
heart was full to overpouring, then he ofiFered me the
eloquent little flower.

I have little more to say of the Mutiny. The final
attack on Lucknow began on March 6th. The capture of
the Begum Kotie, of the Imambara, and the Kaiserbagh,
presents a series of scenes of which no drama ever could
give the slightest conception. In the attack on the Begum
Kotie, directed by Brigadier Eobert Napier, the gallant
Hodson fell, and died on the following day. Sir Colin
Campbell attended the funeral, and said with tears over
the grave, " I have lost one of the finest officers in the
army : " and he had. The Kaiserbagh presented, and still
presents, a marvellous scene. It is a network of palaces
interspersed with little gardens ; but all, palaces and gar-
dens, within one great garden. From the roof of the
palace certain of the great men of Gude, in the crisis of
their danger, had been flying kites in sight of the avenge

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 269

ing army. That and all other amusement was very soon
and very roughly checked by the sack of the palace, and
the destruction of nearly all that could be destroyed. The
palaces of Lucknow are now in many parts inhabited by
soldiers and soldiers' wives, but as the traveller wanders
through the portals and long avenues, it must be hard to
forget the splendour of the noble capital of Oude. There
is in those beautiful palaces something voiceful as to
English errors of policy ; something too of wrongs inflicted
on the people of Oude. If any one supposes that we were
a guiltless people in 1857, 1 would refer him for evidence
to the contrary to the work of Mr J. Bruce Norton.^ The
statements given of the ruthless confiscation of property,
and of deeper wrongs, would startle many who fancy that
it was a rule of unalloyed justice against which the sepoys
rebelled.

To the collapse of the Mutiny in Central India by the
campaign of Sir Hugh Eose reference has been made in an
earlier chapter. Of his chief antagonist, Tantia Topee, it
may be said that he was greater in defeat than in the days
when he had seemed on a fair way to victory. Defeated
at GowlowUe (Calpee), compelled to stand by while Jhansi
was stormed and no quarter given, defeated with the Eanee
under the fort of GwaUor, bereft by death of the support
of the Eanee's indomitable courage and name, and with
Oude and the North Western Provinces subdued, he still
gathered men around him, threatening Jeypore, plunder-
ing Tonk, stopping in his flight to exact from an impor-
tant town a heavy tribute in the very face of our own
troops, directing his flight towards the Nerbudda and the
Taptee, with intent to rouse the Deccan and fire the
Eohillas to a new struggle, till at last he was betrayed,
caught in his sleep, and executed. A few Tantia Topees
would have told a different tale.

I desire to apply very briefly to existing facts this story
of the Mutiny. Leaving altogether the question of what

1 Topics for Indian Stateuuen (1858), pp. 163-177.

270 ENGLISH RULE AND

preceded 1857, let us ask what the Mutiny signified
politically. If we take it as a general revolt against
English rule, the reply to it was a series of victories till
the last embers of the flame were trampled out. If we
take it as a revolt against annexations which threatened
to sweep away all native states and confiscate private
property, then the policy of Lord Dalhousie had its com-
pletion in the victories of the very different viceroyalty of
Lord Canning. That this issue was forced upon us matters
little if it really was the issue. I believe the people of
Oude meant it to be so ; but do we ? The Queen's pro-
clamation says, no ; and the words of many wise statesmen
both here and in India say no. Is there, then, no means of
giving effect to the benign proclamation of the Queen ?
Could not some Commission specially devoted to the work
go through India to examine all private claims in the
place of the judgment-seat of the Moguls ?

Secondly, and with a view to this suggestion, is it not
worth our while to consider how much we owed in 1857 to
adventitious circumstances ? We had, prior to the Mutiny,
concluded the war in the Crimea, and had had a finer army
when we ended than when we began. Some of our best
troops and officers were also set free at the critical moment
by the peace with Persia. We were at peace with all the
world except China, and that was one of the most favour-
able events of the whole, since we were able to intercept
the troops intended for China and direct them on India.
Then the mutineers had no real head of princely rank.
The King of Delhi was an imbecile. The Nana was no
soldier. The best soldiers of India and the ablest chiefs
were on our side. Many readers will, I am sure, see in all
this the silver lining to the dark cloud.

If, however, this was God's mercy to England, what was
the mercy for ? Assuredly it was not that Englishmen
might with greater facility lay up stores of money, or the
nation maintain its high prestige. I do not see that we
have any special claim to God's favour in India, unless we

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 271

can claim it on the ground of upright aims ; and we had
some of quite a dififerent kind. I believe there are high-
minded men in India ready to redress real wrongs, to push
aside that dishonest self-seeking which never will be want-
ing while there exist such interests as Englishmen find in
India, with such opportunities as Englishmen possess for
making those interests paramount considerations. There
are men working to educate India to self-government, to
bring about that day, the dream of many an ardent spirit,
when England, having at last done her duty in the greatest
trust ever given to a nation, may retire from India with
honour, and with the esteem of the nation, which she may,
if she will, build up for a quiet future among men.

Finally, there is the vast important question of the duty
of England to her own people in India. Are the securities
for them greater than in 1 85 7 .? We have seen that certain
favourable circumstances existed in that year. In refer-
ence to those circumstances I have heard people say, " If
ever there is another mutiny, the mutineers will be better
prepared and more united;" and I have heard others
reply, " Yes, and so shall we." Is this last assertion as
certain as the first ? Englishmen are in India one year
and in England the next. Lord Napier, for instance, could
not now be spared to India in case of a European war.
The chiefs of India can study the history of the Mutiny
at home. If Scindia or Holkar have not a com-
plete strategetical plan of the country from other than
•British hands, it is his own fault. Our soldiers and
civil oflScers pass away ; Scindia and Holkar, and the in-
terests they represent, remain. They might provide for
this or that eventuality. We can only wait, because,
though we govern as a despotism, we govern with a com-
monwealth, and the uttermost ends of the earth from India
are our home.

If, however, India is fairly dealt with, very few chiefs,
or educated men of any kind, have any motive to mutiny.
The chiefis, for instance, to whom reference is made in an

272 NA TJVE OPINION IN INDIA.

earlier chapter in relation to the Star of India, what have
they to gain by an outbreak if England is just? An
attempt perhaps to found another Empire ; war that would
once more transform the map of India, perhaps of Asia.
They see, however, as cleai-ly as we see, that the collapse
of the Mutiny of 1857 was, in the first instance, the
triumph of the annexation policy. What remains is to
show them that it means, in the second instance, the honest
carrying out of the proclamation of the Queen.

CHAPTER XXI.

NATIVE WORK : EAGERNESS OF THE PEOPLE FOR EDU-
CATION : EMINENT MEN: MATERIAL AND MORAL
PROGRESS.

Of the hand-work of native India much has been said in
the foregoing chapters, but very much more might be said
without having indicated even the general features of
trades and industries in which the natives of India exceL
Looking at a large building — say, the new Law Courts in
Calcutta — in course of erection, and while the scaffolding
is up, you see a mass of stone-work in a bamboo cage, as
intricate as the ropes of a ship. View it before the work
begins, and you see some hundreds of men, with clothing
of the scantiest, engaged in gossip. You will find it ex-
ceedingly difficult to believe that they are skilled labourers.
View the building during work hours, and you find those
men perched on bits of bamboo, carving stone here, lay-
ing stones there, busy as bees everywhere without and
within ; women, I am sorry to say, working as labourers,
carrying the " hods." A workman in Europe would think
the man mad who asked him to stand on such a scaiTold.
Yet these men stand on it, and sit on it ; and in both cases
the work goes on, and is often very good work. If you
send for a man to mend a floor, he sits down composedly,
with his knees as high as his chin, and saws and planes
in that posture. If you watch him, you grow irritated ; if
you leave hini, you find the work done in fairly reasonable
time, and at a very reasonable rate. The one sight an
Englishman never ought to see in an Indian printing-
office is the lifting of a " form " of type, if he also have seen

s

274 ENGLISH RULE AND

the fastening of it in the " form." The wedges (quoins)
are always too large or too small, and the frame is sure
to be so much to.o large that a tilt or a touch would seem
sufficient to send the whole into chaos. When the type
is lifted, an Englishman's best course is to close his eyes ;
when he opens them again, he is sure to find the type all
right. The hand of an Indian workman, if not interfered
with, is as sure as the foot of an Alpine mule. The first
week of my own experience was that of a strike for wages.
I tried all manner of reasoning, but to no purpose. The
men pleaded a prior promise, and insisted upon the ad-
vance now. I was compelled to let them go and engage
strangers, and, as a result, to stay in the office all night
through each night before publication. I found it was an
error. The men, timid as fawns in most cases, were dis-
turbed by being overlooked. I gave it up, save at inter-
vals, and the whole affair improved. The type is set up
by workmen who, in many cases, know nothing of Eng-
lish ; yet a sharp boy will in three months learn as much
as an average English boy in three years. At about four-
teen they are called " men,*' a very amusing term when
applied to a delicate little fellow with a wrist about as
thick as a man's thumb. The first " proofs" are dreadful ;
but the readers are patient men, and, after the third cor-
rection, you have a proof reasonably good.

If you tease a carpenter or a blacksmith, he will look
at you in helpless bewilderment ; not angrily, say what
you may, but helplessly. If you let him alone, he will,
in a very strange fashion, with strangely imperfect tools,
give you satisfactory work. A gardener at work seems
playing, but then his play never ceases while there is any
light; and either he, or some Indian Robin GoodfeUow
for him, will keep a garden well trimmed, and have vases
of fresh flowers on some table, or tables, every morning.
So also in carving, weaving, writing, everything that one
could name of light work. In engineering I should be
doubtful of the Indian workman, at least till a race of

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 27$

engineers has been systematically trained. Exceedingly
exact in weaving and penmanship, he would perhaps find
a difficulty in the exact work of a steam-engine. The
most finely-carved boxes are generally deficient in locks
and hinges. In penmanship, as in chess or card-playing,
the Hindoo is a master where his mind is really engaged.
The clerks write beautifully, and often are born account-
ants. The little fellows in the jute-mills take the reels
from the spindles like magic. If you give a labourer a
wheelbarrow, and he prefers to carry it on his head in-
stead of wheeling it (a fact, it is said, in the early days of
railways), it must be remembered that he has hereditary
claim to work as his fathers worked before him. If he is
proud, and leaves your service rather than be compelled
to work in a new way, he also will often be proud enough
to leave his wages behind him, and never once ask for
them. In fact, the Indian workman is often a skilful man,
and if the paths were open to him, it would be difficult to
mark a limit to his powers.

Moreover, there is everywhere in India a real deference
paid to the man of skill and piety, as well as to caste. I
was very soon attracted by the fact that while wealth
nearly always is the chief means of distinguishing man
from man in England, it has no such exclusive power in
India, There are few sights more pitiable than the devo-
tee. His whole life is to outside beholders one of misery.
But what is he honoured for ? Not wealth ; for he is often
wretchedly poor. He is honoured for his presumed piety,
for his devotion to the Creator. He has subdued the flesh
with its affections and lusts ; has brought the body into
subjection to the spirit ; has risen above time, and lives
in eternity. For these he is honoured. In a like but
different way the true workman has his rank, while the
Brahmin, however poor, has a right to sit among princes.
When he is a learned Brahmin, you undoubtedly have the
highest product of Hindoo life. Millions would bow to

276 ENGUSH RULE AND

such a man, whom many rude Englishmen ruthlessly push
aside.

Never was there a people more eager for education, or
who deserved to be more leniently and kindly dealt with in
that eagerness. " Give us knowledge," is the cry, at least
throughout BengaL A certain class of Englishmen in keen,
ridicule reply, "Go to your work; what has your M.A-
degree done for you ? " The Bengalee turns away from
such men, with his insatiable craving only the more
whetted by the repulse. He will work night and day,
and will endure much persecution, if only he can have
that upon which he has set his heart, the knowledge that
will enable him to rise in life. " Yes," it is said, " that is
all he cares for — to rise in life ; " a rejoinder which comes
badly from Englishmen, who in most cases are in India for
that special purpose, and no other. The native of India,
Hindoo and Mohammedan alike, where the latter is not
altogether reckless or despondent, wishes to better his
condition in life. Apart from all questions of right and
wrong, is it not England's high interest to afford him that
opportunity, and to encourage him to the grand race with
Englishmen ? He wiU in any case, and do what England
may, enter the race heavily weighted. He must pass ex-
aminations in themes of foreign thought, in a foreign lan-
guage, and in a foreign land. He must go, at immense
cost — and not mere money cost, for he breaks his cherished
caste by the voyage — to England. Often without a friend
in London, these brave lads cross the ocean, and are thrown
into the great dangers of a life whose pitfalls are on every
hand. They face English tutors, mix with English com-
petitors, brook English snobbery, and bear away from
Englishmen the prizes of England's competitive examina-
tions. The thorny, path is in nowise smoothed for them
by the conmion sense of the examiners, but is often beset
by absurdities. I once sent home a list of questions
and answers which I copied from the papers of the en-

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 277

trance examination for the Calcutta University, and some
time after I found a gentleman attacking me in a book
for ridiculing the young men. I was ridiculing the men
who drew up the questions. Here are a few, with the
answers : —

(§.) "Dapper man?" {A. i.) "Man of superfluous knowledge."
(/I. 2.) " Mad."— (§.) "Democrat]" {A. i.) "Petticoat govern-
ment." U. 2.) " Witchcraft" {A. 3.) " Half turning of the horse.'^
— (§.) " Babylonish jargon ? " (A. i.) "A vessel made at Babylon."
(A, 2.) "A kind of drink made at Jerusalem." (A, 3.) "A kind of
coat worn by Babylonians." — (Q.) "Lay brother?" {A, i.) "A
bishop." {A. 2.) "A step-brother." (A, 3.) "A scholar of the same
godfather."— (§.) "Sumpter mule?" (a}) "A stubborn Jew."—
(Q.) " Bilious- looking fellow ?" (J. i.) "A man of strict character."
(i4. 2.) " A person having a nose like the bill of an eagle." — (§.)
" Cloister ? " (.4 .) " A kind of shell."— (§.) " Tavern politicians ? "
{A. I.) "Politicians in charge of the alehouse." (A, 2.) "Merevul-
gars." (A, 3.) " Managers of the priestly church." — (§.) " A pair of
cast-off galligaskins?" {A^ "Two gallons of wine." — (§.) "Vis
inertifle?" {A, i.) " Flesh of swine." (J. 2.) " Sweet mUk.'— (§.)
" The mule was well broken to a pleasant and accommodating
amble ? " (-4.) " The mule was entirely covered with mud." — (Q.)
" Columbus rode out the storm in safety under the lee of the island?"
(yl.) ** Though there was a violent storm, yet Columbus, by riding
on horseback, reached under the lee of the island in security."

Do not these answers at least show us how difficult is
the course of the young men of Indian race who compete
with Englishmen for the prizes of public employment?
No ingenuity in the world could divine the meaning of
phrases like several of these questions. They must have
been heard, and in the language in which a person thinks,
before they could have meaning to any human soul.

Again, I have heard it said that a native of India goes
as far as he is taught, and can go no farther. I deny this
thoroughly and entirely. It is a gross misrepresentation.
The native of India is an essentially capable man, and he
is often badly used. I have seen Englishmen going through
crowds of the people of native India, as at the Calcutta and
Howrah landing-stages, elbomng their way as through a

rjZ ENGLISH RULE AND

lierd of cattle, and the people, as a rule, falling back on all
hands. Sometimes the rule is broken, and the brutality
meets with its match ; but as a rule it selects the poorest
people, and rarely is met with real determination. We
count men as of an inferior race, deny them careers, and
then talk of them as incapable of a higher life. When the
Catholic in England was shut out from public life, what
did he become ? Some sank, for want of society, to a low
state ; some went abroad ; some, like Mr Charles Water-
ton, the naturalist, found a need for aU their innate
gentlemanliness and loyalty to preserve them from in-
tense hatred to the nation that had proved to them so
hard a step-mother. Yet no Eoman Catholic ever knew
aught so disheartening as the lot of the native of India.

Let them go to work and leave the colleges, it is said.
Let those who say so set the example. It is not a mer6
question of public office, but of status in the place of a
man's birth that is at issue. The native of India is, I
have said, a thoroughly capable man. He is also a man
by nature polite. Yet the most gentlemanly man, and the
man of the highest social position in a district, may be
made to feel, and feel sharply, that he is subordinate to
some yoimg officer fresh from England, and ignorant of all
life save that of schools. It is very hard. It is also far
from uncommon. " Why is this ? " the people say. " Is
it that you think you have only a life-tenure in India ?
Akbar governed on principles applicable to a rule which
he wished to continue. You govern as if you felt that any
day your rule might end." In a paper read in London, in
1874, by a native gentleman from Bombay, there is a
black-list of cases of oppression and maladministration,
and the native journals in reviewing the paper added to
the list. One case mentioned was that of an attempt
to intimidate some influential persons who wished to
petition against the union of Oude and the North Western
Provinces. Do not let anybody say here that I am making
the interest of India to take precedence of that of England,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 279

or the interest of natives of India to take precedence of
that of EngUshmen in India. I am doing nothing of the
kind. As between England and India, every Englishman
would be for England, even if in consequence we had to
leave India to-morrow. The interests of England and
India are the same. It is simply that, as between justice
and injustice, I am pleading for justice ; and that, as be-
tween England's high permanent interest and the low
interests which may be characterised by selfishness, I am
pleading for the high and permanent. The Indian Civil
Service contains some men of the highest character; but
their efforts are thwarted and their safety endangered by
lower aims and acts. We have opened to India a new
door, a new life of knowledge, and the strongest arms in
the world never again can close the door. We cannot
follow the rule of Akbar, because the rule of England is
really that of a democracy. The Queen herself must per-
force view India in the light of affording careers to her
subjects at home, while India adds nothing to the special
revenue of the Crown. English interests will have influ-
ence, do what the greatest Viceroy may, and desire what
he may. But English interests, to endure in India, must
be interwoven with the interests of India.

In preparing the materials for this chapter, it occurred
to me that some good might accrue if examples of the
character and ability of some eminent men of native India,
and not Christian, were given, as showing not merely what
India can produce of intellect and manhood, but what a
native of India may, in the face of aU obstacles, achieve.
To Sir Dinkur Eao reference has already been made. His
distinction prior to the Mutiny rested on his great admini-
strative ability, by means of which he pacified a number
of disturbed districts, trampling down oppression, and up-
rooting a system of taxation by which the people had been
very nearly goaded into rebellion. And whUe he reduced
the taxes he increased the revenue. Wlien the Mutiny
came, and the die had to be cast for Maharajah Scindia,

28o ENGLISH RULE AND

Dinkur Eao said firmly, " for English rule." The Maha-
rajah, however valid his grounds of discontent, has had
reason to think with gratitude of that wise and far-seeing
advice. Since 1857 it has been the delight of many Eng-
lish statesmen to honour Sir Dinkur Eao, and when the trial
of the Guikwar of Baroda was decided upon, his name, as
that of one of the judges, was the best proof of all to native
India that the motive of Lord Northbrook was an upright
one. That the native view delivered as a verdict was sub-
sequently set aside, was not, I should say, a fault of Lord
Northbrook, as it certainly was not that of Sir Dinkur
Rao.

For the scene of action of Sir Mahdava Eao we must
go southward, to a difierent and yet a not dissimilar field
of labour. Sir Dinkur Eao began without a knowledge of
the English language, and in learning it was his own
teacher. Sir Mahdava Eao, in the year 1849, had com-
pleted a very distinguished career at the Madras High
School, and on the strength of that, as well as of his family
loyalty, the post of tutor to the young princes, nephews to
the Eajah of Travancore, was offered to him. The story
was well told, but without a signature, in the " Calcutta
Eeview," in October 1872. Few people could have dreamt
that the author of it was, as he was, one of Sir Mahdava
Eao*s pupils, the present first Prince of Travancore. Of
Mahratta family, the Prince wrote, the ancestors of Sir
Mahdava Eao had for several generations held oflSces of
trust both under native chiefs and "the rising British power."
His father was Dewan (prime minister) of Travancore, and
was highly esteemed by Lord William Bentinck, and by
the British officers with whom he came into official or
other relations. Sir Mahdava Eao was the youngest of
the Dewan's three sons.

He held the office of tutor for four years and a half, the
affairs of Travancore going meanwhile from bad to worse
in every way. The law courts were infamous ; the police
did what was light in their own eyes. Public works

NA TJVE OPINION IN INDIA. 28 1

there were none; public spirit there was none; and at
last the dreadful eye of Lord Dalhousie fell on Travan-
core, and one of those warnings not to be neglected was
given. Lord Dalhousie, however, was called home, and
the Mutiny gave Travancore a breathing-time. In 1855
Mahdava Eao was made Dewan Peshkar (next in rank
to the Dewan), but there were other Dewan Peshkars —
from two to four at diflTerent times — and the newly ap-
pointed officer claimed to have a certain number of Tjdooks
placed under his own charge. His wish was complied
with, but the worst Talooks — those from which complaints
were most common — ^were selected for him. Within a
year, Mr Norton said, in a most appreciative reference, the
new Dewan Peshkar called order out of disorder. The law
courts were reformed, and made to hold up the scales of
justice with an even hand ; the police were paid, dacoits
driven away, and the revenue raised. " Here," Mr Norton
added subsequently, " is a man raised up, as it were, amid
the anarchy and confusion of his country to save it from
destruction."

In 1857 the Dewan died, and the post was given to
Mahdava Rao. He was then in the thirtieth year of his
age, and might, his pupil and Mend said, have been con-
sidered too young for the post, considering the sad state of
the country. The dacoits (robbers) were all-powerful, and
were only less dreaded than the police, who were robbers
of even a worse kind. Robbery and oppression were the
rule of the life of Travancore. The young Dewan required
all his energy, ability, and address, but they were equal to
the need. His influence was felt everywhere. A caste
dispute, called into prominence by the Queen's Procla-
mation in 1857, he met with firmness and conciliation, and
it was extinguished. The Maharajah died in i860, and
the Dewan had then the advantage of serving a Prince
whom he had educated. For nine years the revenue
steadily rose ; yet, at the same time, the two great sources
of income, the pepper and the tobacco monopolies, were

282 ENGLISH RULE AND

sacrificed, and the police and all other officers were paid,
instead of being allowed to pick and steal as formerly. At
the time when Lord Dalhousie's dread warning arrived, the
debt of Travancore was ;f 50,000, with interest amounting
to half as much more. In 1862-^3 Sir Mahdava Bao paid
;g' 15,000, the last of the debt and interest; and he then
said, with noble pride, " Tranvancore has now no public
debt." This would have been little, however, if the public
debt had been cancelled at the cost of private happiness,
if trade had been fettered, and the means of comfort taken
from the people; but such was not the case. In 1861-62
Sir Mahdava Eao had spent ;f 30,000 in public works, and
he increased the amount every subsequent year while his
rule continued. Large sums were also spent on education.
Yet, in 1864-65, without adding a penny to the taxes, save
in the single case of salt, for which tax the British Govern-
ment was responsible, and after abolishing two specially
productive monopolies, he had in the Treasury a balance of
£20fyoo. The Prince concluded:

" We are tempted to dwell upon many more interesting features
of Mahdava Rao's glorious administration of fourteen years, but
want of space forbids us. However, we must make one more quota-
tion from the last of his administrative reports. He says : ' In
conclusion, it may be briefly observed, that it is the cherished aim of
His Highness's Government to provide for every subject, within a
couple of hours' journey, the advantages of a doctor, a schoolmaster,
a judge, a magistrate, a registering officer, and a postmaster. The
various departments concerned are steadily progressing towards this
consummation.' Indeed, he found Travancore in the lowest stage
of degradation and political disorganisation. He has left it a ' model
Native State.' He has done a great work. He has earned an im-
perishable name in India."

Well, he may have "earned an imperishable name in
India," but it is a name, I am sorry to say, very little
known in England. In 1872 Sir Mahdava Eao resigned
his post, and was offered a seat in the Viceregal Council ;
but he declined it, feeling, no doubt, that his strength lies
in his individuality, and that to work in grooves would be

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 283

to work in vain. He therefore accepted the office of Dewan
to the Maharajah Holkar.

When I first read the story from which this is taken,
I concluded that it was the work of some cahn and con-
scientious officer of Madras. The idea of a native Prince
writing such an article was quite beyond my range of
vision, though I had read, and not a little, of the first
Prince of Travancore. What was most apparent from the
article was that we have no place for men like Mahdava
Eao and Dinkur Eao, distinguished at once for their ability
and their honesty. Let us face the fact — ^Why have we
no place for such men ? That they would make revenue
to exceed expenditure, and at the same time relieve and
foster trade, no one can doubt ; but then they would de- '
mand the reduction of expenditure ; and who knows where
the reduction would first appear ? This is the whole truth.
Wliile we cannot fathom the life of native India — and,
perhaps, far less so now than when men remained in India
for thirty years without ever seeing England — ^the very
deepest depths are not unfathomable to those who, in addi-
tion to genius, possess a knowledge of the habits and a key
to the sympathies of the people.

I brought with me also two lectures of this first Prince
of Travancore, who is hin^elf notable in various ways,
and worthy of esteem. The one is on "Our Industrial
Status," the other on "Our Morals." In the latter he
says, with a generous boldness :

" I am not a Christian. I do not accept the cardinal tenets of
Christianity as they concern man in the next world. On these
matters I have my own beHefs. But I accept Christian ethics in
their entirety. I have the highest admiration for them. Speaking
of Christianity as it concerns this world, it has effected a wonderful
moral revolution in Europe. I can imagine the question, * Does not
vice exist among Christians ? ' I do not hesitate to affirm that vice,
crime, and immorality, exist in Christendom to the same extent as
they do in India. Under the heading of * Law and Crime ' in the
English dailies, you will always find abundant records of crimes of
the worst description. Electioneering is^ again, a mine of corrup-

284 ENGLISH RULE AND

tion. But yet there is a difference. That difference consists in the
standard of morality which an average Christian and an average
Hindoo respectively acknowledge."

Here is the " practical application : "

" My suggestion is, that those among my countrymen who, after
mature consideration, can convince themselves of their ability to
take the responsibility, should form themselves into a society or
order. ... It will be well that every candidate should continue to
be a probationer for a time, say a year. . . . The society, as a
whole, will possess the full freedom of reprehending any member
for misconduct, and, if necessary, dismissing him from its body, with-
out being amenable to the general public. I am convinced that
some such plan . . . will prove a very effective means of promoting
morality. With those who may wish it I shall be happy to confer
further on the subject"

That is, the Prince would be glad to see his friends in
the vestry after service to discourse on morals. Does
this look like barbarism ? I can convey no idea here of
the varied character of the lecture on " Our Industrial
Status." But the entire drift of it is to induce industry,
enterprise, temperance, and public spirit. After a really
clever description of the varied climates and productions
of India, and especially of Travancore (as an epitome of
India), he says :

'* At the same time, I am strongly tempted to exclaim, in the
words of the immortal Scotch novelist, 'Look at these barren
hills, Mary, and at that deep winding vale by which the cattle are
even now returning from their scanty browse. The hand of the
industrious Fleming would cover these mountains with wood, and
raise com where we now see a starved and scanty sward of heath
and ling. It grieves me, Mary, when I look on that land, and think
what benefit it might receive from such men as I have lately seen.'
We are not sufficiently industrious. ... It never enters the mind
of the peasant or those who are much wealthier and better informed
than he, to endeavour to make two blades of grass grow where only
one does now, or to make that one blade twice as valuable as it now
is. The population has been rapidly increasing, while the cultiva-
tion of the land has been, out of all proportion, lagging behind*
Paddy is the chief produce of the land ; yet foreign paddy, worth
several lacs of rupees, is annually imported. No attempt worth the

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 285

name is made to increase the area of cnltiyation by reclaiming
waste lands, of which we have abundance, or to enhance the yield
of the existing lands by deep-ploughing, manuring, selecting the best
and most prolific varieties of indigenous or exotic seeds ; by irrigat-
ing where it is needful and practicable, and by carefully harvesting
the crops. I think these are views worthy of the esteem of all men,
and they are carried into practice."

Something of the lives of Bajah Bam Mohun E07, and
of his disciple Maharajah Bomanath Tagore, we have
already seen. Of the former much has been told in all
civilised lands. As a product of the learning and medita-
tion of Native India, he will remain one of the facts of
modem times. His purity and calmness, his breadth and
catholicity of view, were so marked, that he took up much
of the ground previously occupied, as a special right, by
Christian missionaries, and showed to his countrymen that
moral truth and action do not belong exclusively to any
form of creed.

One of his earliest and most attached disciples was
Dwarkanath Tagore, the brother of RomanatL Springing,
as the reader may have observed, from a race of Brahmins,
the Tagores threw their traditions to the wind — ^not to
become Christian, but to follow the first Brahmist. The
story of the life of Dwarkanath Tagore was graphically
told in Calcutta in 1870 by Baboo Kissory Chand Mitter;
and it contains a fine moral He was, his biographer says,
" the first native gentleman who set up a banking-house on
the European model ; " and he was congratulated on the
fact by Lord William Bentinck. His history as a banker
is one of great forbearance and generosity, and of sterling
probity and honour. He had factories for indigo, sugar, and
silk. He worked coal and other mines, and did £dl that,
and much besides, with a singleness of purpose which his
countrymen deemed all but miraculous. As evidence of
his tolerant spirit, it is said that when in the North West,
he saw with enthusiasm the Taj, the fairest monument of
an antagonistic faith, gave a clock to a Christian church that
needed one, and then bowed in the spirit of his own faith

286 ENGUSH RULE AND

in the early home of Ejishna, the god of the Hindoos.
He gave freely to every charity, and every institution for
the good of India, with the single exception of missions.
Kissory Chand Mitter tells us of a district judge who
arrived iu Calcutta very sick, to embark for England, and
was threatened with arrest and imprisonment for a debt
of £10,000. Well-nigh in despah*, he appealed to Dwar-
kanath Tagore, whom he did not even know. The banker
made iaquiries, paid the money, and received the bonds
and notes. Then he called upon the judge, who began to
show the sadness of his case. " But it is done," said the
princely Hindoo; "there are the bonds." The judge
wished then to give another bond, but Dwarkanath refused
it. " If you live," he said, " you will pay me. If not, it
would only be waste paper." The judge lived, and paid
the money debt. The greater debt, one thinks, never
could be paid. Nobody of the judge's own faith would have
paid £10,000 for him. It was the Samaritan who poured
in the oil and wine, who sent the sick Englishman to
England free.

Ram Mohun Hoy died and was buried at Bristol in
1833. Ten years later (1843) his body was removed from
a shrubbery in which he had requested to be laid, and re-
buried iu a beautiful cemetery of the town. This was
done by his disciple, Dwarkanath Tagore, who also placed a
monument over the grave. In England Dwarkanath was
received in a kindly spirit by the Queen, and honoured by
many leading Englishmen. He went to York, to New-
castle (to see the coal-pits, of which he made notes as a
mine-owner), to Sheffield, and elsewhere. " At Smeaton,"
his biographer says, " he attended the kirk, but found a
great difierence between the Scotch and English services.
' Thinking one sermon,' says he, * quite sufficient, I came
away after the first, which was more like a lecture than
a sermon.' " Probably he mistook a prayer for a sermon ;
an extempore prayer here has little in common with the
devotional prayers of the Brahmist. At the Guildhall

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 287

he spoke some loyal, earnest words. Finally, he died in
England, and lies among Englishmen at Kensal Green.
While, therefore, England has some sacred graves in India,
the people of India are not without some claim to like
sacred graves in England. No nobler dead lie anywhere
than Eam Mohun Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore.

This notice seems to lead naturally to the name of
Elissory Chand Mitter, who died in 1873. I believe he
was a thoroughly brave man ; I am sure he was very able.
He had climbed his way from a lowly station to one of
distinction in the public service, when he had the mis-
fortune to quarrel with an Englishman above him in
position, and the Hindoo, of course, went to the walL He
lost all the work of his earlier years. As a writer, how-
ever, he still had an open field which no man could close ;
and a very powerful writer he was. He edited the
** Indian Field," afterwards incorporated with the " Hindoo
Patriot." He contributed papers to the " Calcutta Review;"
the fine paper on Ram Mohun Roy, and a series of bril-
liant sketches (1872) on " The Territorial Aristocracy of
Bengal" As a Hindoo he was one of the most fearless
I ever met, and I could see, though I only met him twice,
one of the most scornful of all unworthy cringing to Euro-
peans. He belonged to a brave little band of native men
in Calcutta whom no Government can well afibrd to
neglect, and whom no wise Government would wish to
neglect. In November 1874, I sent home these few
remarks :

'^ We have many stories of English lads who have made their way
against all odds to honour and usefulness. Here is a story of a
Hindoo lad — the late Mr Justice Mitter, Judge of the High Court.
He was bom in a little Hindoo village, and his parents were but
poor. He received his education I know not where, but he came to
Calcutta, as many a young man has gone to London, to carve his
way to fortune ; only in his case there was contention against a
dominant race. He held his own, however, through good report
and evil report, till the time when the poor Hindoo lad became
a Judge of the High Court ! He worked splendidly, subdued self.

288 ENGLISH RULE AND

sat in modest dignity (I speak from knowledge, for I have seen him,)
on the bench of the High Court, deciding intricate cases as a Judge
and a gentleman. At last he was seized with a fatal disease. He
asked to be taken to a sanitarium, and he was obeyed. Time went
on, but he only became worse. It was death, the doctors mournfully
said. Then he had but one request He had sat on the judicial
bench, had been a marked man at the lerees and drawing-rooms, at
public gatherings for institutions which sought distinguished names.
Englishmen of the first position — notably Sir Barnes Peacock — did
themselves honour by claiming him as their friend. Now had come
the grand issue of all, and the dying Judge begged to be taken to
the village, and, I suppose, the house, in which he was bom. In
this way the two ends of life came together — simply as in the play
of children and grandly as in an epic poem. There, where the trees
wliicli he had loved in childhood waved before his eyes, the pure and
noble Judge died. He had lived to make his countrymen proud of
the Hindoo name, and he died in a path of duty which India, if it
is wise, will not readily forget."

When the native papers were published at the end of
the week, I found that there was much more to tell of the
dead Judge. The " Bengalee," after stating that in early
life Mr Mitter had been a zealoas Hindoo, and a little
later a "thorough-going sceptic," said that "from this
anarchical state of mind he was roused by Positivism. Hav-
ing accidentally come across a copy of Comte's Catechism,
he was so struck with the novelty and profundity of its
doctrines that he felt interested to read it through. Its
eflect was electrical ; it transformed the entire character
of his thoughts. When a student in the Hooghly College,
the study of an annotated edition of Shelley's 'Queen
Mab' made him a sceptic. A deeper insight into the
philosopher whose catholicity is his most conspicuous
merit, who reveres St. Paul as he is revered by the most
bigoted Catholic, who has described the services done to
^humanity by the lowest fetishism, led to the gradual dis-
appearance of this scoffing spirit, and at last he came to
speak of even Hindooism and Brahman priests with
respect." The "Patriot" said: "He was a voracious
yeader, but a very reluctant writer, and the only literary

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 289

contributions he made were the articles on 'Analytical
Geometry' in *Mookerjee's Magazine.'^ He was also a
lover of science, and for some time regularly attended
Father Lafont's science lectures at St Xavier's College.
He marked his appreciation of science by subscribing the
munificent sum of ;^4CX) to Dr. Sircar's projected Science
Association. He was a man of open-handed charity." Was
he not also an evidence of the yeast that is brewing, in
God's good keeping, among the best of the young men of
India?

The reference to Dr Sircar's Science Association leads
on my little narrative to a living man and a great
work. When I arrived in India in 1870, Dr Sircar's pro-
posal had been a few months before the country, and
already had some very honourable pecuniary support from
his own countrymen, but very little from Englishmen.
Dr Sircar explained his project at length, but with fasti-
dious modesty. " I want," he said, " a purely Scientific
Association, for the purpose of carrying on observation
and experiment, and not for mere popular lecturing, though
the latter will form a part of the programme of its working.
Sight-seeing and sight-showing certainly ought not to be
the objects of the Institution." To carry out all this, a
house, books, a chemical laboratory, mechanical, electrical,
and magnetic instruments, astronomical and meteorological
instruments, a geological and zoological museum, a her-
barium, and a thousand other things, " without which it
will be a mockery to begin to work," were required. Alto-
gether the scheme he considered, with salaries and costs,
required at least a sum of £ io,ocx). For a long time the
sum stood at less than ;f 5000, and the subscribers urged

1 This magazine was set on foot, at lessly satirised, without the slightest

an undoubtedlj considerable money consideration for the fact that it was

Sacrifice, by an able man, and it a reflex of Hindoo life and opinion in

bade fair to attract to it some of the an English dress. The review aU but

best writers of the Hindoo race. Un- destroyed a fair and honourable at-

happily it was sent for review to a tempt to do a public service,
great English journal, and was meroi*

T

290 ENGUSH RULE AND

Dr Sircar to begin the work. He did not, however, see
his way; and what may surprise some people, till he
could see his way he refused the money. Early in 1875,
Father Lafont appealed to the public for help to build a
spectro-telescopic observatory, and received the required
money at once, cheerfully, and, of course, deservedly.
Meanwhile, however, the modest, retiring, Hindoo scholar
made little advance upon his £^<yx>. At last the scheme
caught the eye of the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Sichard
Temple. He contributed to it;f 50, and became a monthly
subscriber. The subscriptions now rose to £iooo^ and
the subscribers manifested as strange an inclination to
pay down the money as Dr Sircar did a determination
not to have it. At last he hit upon a notable device,
which may perhaps be useful to the "Syndicates" of
flash London companies. He would have an independent
committee elected to receive the money and take care of
it — ^the un-shop-like scholar ! A meeting was held, and
Father Lafont, who was chairman, said :

" I belong to a religion commonly, tliough erroneously, regarded
as antagonistic to science, a religion whose priests are supposed to
dread the encroachments of science for fear that their dogmatic
teaching might sufTer by this enlightened contact. Well, gentlemen,
I declare to you, that though a Catholic and a priest, I hail with
delight and pursue with love any advance of irut science : the only
thing that frightens me being the pretended discoveries of men who
are not satisfied with facts, but put in their stead, and erect into
scientific dogmas, the ill-digested lucubrations of their imaginations."

The following resolution was passed at a later meeting :

"We are of opinion that an Association for the cultivation of science
by the natives of this country will be of incalculable benefit not to
them alone, but may be ultimately to the world at lai^e. We there-
fore strongly recommend that steps be taken at once for the estab-
lishment of such an Association."

Sir Eichard Temple, when once he had entered upon the
project, held to it in his characteristic, vigorous way. In
February 1876 he stated in a minute that the Bengal
Government would give a house for a term of years to

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 291

the Association, on condition that £7000 were raised, and
;^ 5000 invested in Grovernment securities, with suhscrip-
tions of at least ;£" 10 a month for two years. In this way
the "Indian Science Association" was inaugurated in
July last, with an admirable scientific lecture by Dr
Sircar, and a happy and buoyant speech from Sir Sichard
Temple, who was the chairman. Europeans and Natives,
of many different pursuits and of various positions in life,
gathered that day around Dr Sircar, and claiming him as
their friend and the friend of India, bade him God speed.
I could say much more, but I must not add much to this
recital of facts. The scholars of India are in all cases
modest men — ^it seems to belong to their scholarship —
and Dr Sircar is modest to an extreme. For himself he
never would ask or accept aught that was like a gift. He
bravely, however, asks for English help for his Association,
that he may teach, in divisions now formed, "General
Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Systematic Botany, Sys-
tematic Zoology, Physiology, and Geology," and extend his
range of usefulness according to his means. He invites
his countrymen to shake off the trammels of false science,
and reason on exact facts. He is, in fact, a scientific
missionary. If he had a scheme for fireworks or uphol-
stery, India would support him ; but as he has only science
to offer, he will, in spite of all, fail, I fear, imless he has
the support of scientific men in England, with some other
generous help. Neither the Hindoo nor the Mohammedan
cares much for science, and some Hindoos and Moham-
medans oppose it as opposed to their faith. I sincerely
wish that this little notice may lead some scientific men
to lend to Dr Sircar a helping hand, and so to knit to
England and mankind a generous and hopeful work.

I have referred earlier to a Free Library, at which I
heard a reading of the "Eamayana." The owner of the
library, a very able man. Baboo Joykissen Mookerjee, is stone
blind. He is a thorough Hindoo, but his choice of books
for his poorer neighbours is of the widest. Nothing is

292 ENGLISH RULE AND

"banished so long as it is not imnioraL In connection
with the library there is a lecture-room, and in a neigh-
bouring village, under another and quite as public-spirited
a branch of the same family, an institution of a similar
kind. The villages are purely Bengalee, and apart from
English society. I met in both some most intelligent and
good, and, at the same time, very poor men, labouring for
their bread by day, and to improve their minds in the
evening hours. I saw them nearly all struck down at
one time of fever, so that the one could not carry a drink
of water to the other. This is one phase of the life of the
poor — the deserving poor — of India. What little money
is needed for their institutions, they easily obtain. For
themselves they ask nothing. They are poor, they are
Hindoo, and they are gentlemen. If an Englishman will
lecture to them they are delighted. They ensure him a
crowded room and a close attention; and when he has
finished, they approach him slowly, diffidently, and say,
"Thank you, sir: it is very kind." Would the reader
regret to know more of these men ?

Desiring in this chapter to say something of Hindoo
humour, the untimely death of the author of the " Nil
Durpan," referred to previously, came at once to my mind,
as one of the best possible illustrations of the geniality
of that humour. The humorist, Baboo Denobundha
Mitter, was a post-office inspector of the first grade, and
for good organising ability during the Looshai expedition
was made Eai Bahadoor. He never, people said, made
a personal enemy. Yet the " Nil Durpan," of which the
"Patriot" affirmed that "it was a faithful transcript of
the condition of the indigo ryots, and that it still charms
crowded audiences," bade fair for the moment to wreck
the author's prospects; and it is to his honour that he
was willing for them to be wrecked if by giving up his
name as author he could have saved Mr Long. He seems
to have embodied and represented all the gentle humour,
that real sense of the ludicrous, for which the Bengalee

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 293

is remarkable; that love for teasing, not always, I must
say, merciful, but never, it appears, unmerciful in his case.
I may also mention the instance of a wealthy writer, the
Eajah Kali Krishna, late head to the notable house referred
to in Chapter xiv. He, besides producing work of his own,
of the merit of which I know nothing, translated " Rasselas "
and " Gay's Fables " into Bengalee, and in that way added
to the stock of native literature.

I must mention also, however, with true regret, that
when Sir Jung Bahadoor died, several of the native papers
claimed him as a Hindoo worthy, and the " Patriot " even
spoke of the coup cF^tat which had " not been followed by
a Sedan." Jung Bahadoor was very able ; he was the ally
of England ; but he waded through slaughter to a throne —
not on the battle-field, but in ruthless massacre. The
"Patriot" would say, "We are following English ex-
ample ; " but such is not the case with reference to any
English example worth following. Few of us can read of
Plassey without a flush of pride, but few of us also have
a word of praise for the transaction with Omichund.^

Taking all these elements as working to one end, we see
the educated, orthodox Hindoo, with his scorn for the men
whose conversions can be bought ; the elder Brahmist
striving hard to proclaim the oneness of the Supreme God
and still remain a Hindoo, cherishing, indeed, the old
familiar name; the younger Brahmist advancing boldly
beyond Hindooism to a philosophy and a faith in which
Christ is one of the master-builders, and God all in all ; the
scientific student casting oflf the old figments of an absurd
science mixed up with a huge superstition ; the Moham-
medan compelling attention to be paid to his long-neglected
condition; the Parsee, claiming to possess all literature,
yet still worshipping the life-representing fire ; the Catholic
proving that he still possesses the power to reach the
"common people," and win by sacrifice their pecuniary
support without even asking for it ; the Protestant, under

^ Appendix VIZ»

294 ENGLISH RULE AND

many various names, labouring by all manner of agencies,
to establish higher standards of morals and education.
Can we suppose that all this work is in vain ?

Finally, we may notice the testimony of eminent English-
men, or Englishmen of high place, to the value of native
work. The Indian Association (in 1853), in aid of a peti-
tion which Mr George Thompson was to present to the
Court of Directors, made a large collection of statements
of opinion, from which I shall take these few : —

Mr Orme wrote : " The administration of justice has been almost
universally, by the Mogul conquerors of Hindostan, devolved upon the
Hindoos, the oflSce of Dewan being generally conferred upon one of
that people." And Mr Mill said further : " The conquest of Hin-
dostan, effected by the Mohammedan nations, was to no extraordinary
degree sanguinary or destructive. It substituted sovereigns of one
race for sovereigns of another, . . . but the whole detail of adminis-
tration, with the exception of the army, and a few of the more pro-
minent situations, remained invariably in the hands of the native
magistrates and officers."

English rule altered this, and for a long time the natives
of India were refused admittance to any office of high trust.
In 1802 Lord Wellesley circulated a series of interrogatories
among his officers as to native efficiency, and had these
among many replies :

Sir Henry Strachey, judge and magistrate : " I am inclined to
think that an intelligent native is better qualified to preside at a
trial than we can be ourselves ; and a very few simple rules would
perhaps suffice to correct the abuses of former times. The native
commissioner decides with the greatest ease a vast number of causes.
He is perfectly acquainted with the language, the manners, and even
the person and characters, of all who come before him. ... I can-
not help wishing that these situations were more respectable in a
pecuniary point of view, and that they were empowered to decide
causes to almost any amount. ... I confess it is my wish, though
possibly I may be blamed for expressing it, not only to have the
authority of the natives as judges extended, but to see them, if pos-
sible, enjoy important and confidential situations in other depart-
ments of the State." Mr Neave : " I am of opinion that the natives,
in respect to integrity and diligence, may be trusted with the admi-
nistration of justice. Still I would not commit exclusively to the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 295

natives any branch of the administration of justice on a large scale ;
I think we ought to keep the judicial branch to ourselves, as a sacred
deposit to raise ourselves in the estimation of the natives. Let our
judicial character counteract the evil impressions created by our
financial system.'* Mr T. H. Ernst : " At present the natives have
certainly more reliance on the uprightness of European judges than
of judges appointed from their own people. But this distinction is
chiefly to be ascribed, I think, to the unequal footing on which the
natives are placed in all official situations compared with Europeans.
The remuneration of the native judges consists of the institution
fee, a miserable pittance, seldom amounting to more than £^0
a year, and sometimes to less than half that sum ; yet, with few
exceptions, I have foimd reason to be satisfied with the conduct of
the moonsiffs and commissioners who were employed in the districts
of Burdwan and Hooghly." Mr E. Strachey : ** Everything com-
bines to make the European honest and independent, and the native
the contrary : reverse their circumstances, and I have no doubt their
conduct would be reversed. . . . For my opinion of the integrity of
the natives, I beg to refer to my answer to the last question. In
respect to diligence I think they are entirely to be trusted." Lord
William Bentinck, Sir Charles Metcalfe, and Mr Bayley, in a letter
to the judges of the Supreme Court, said : " You will thence observe
that the native judges already dispose of about fifteen-seventeenths
of the regular civil suits (original and appeal) tried and determined
throughout the country ; that it is chiefly in the Superior Courts
that the suits in arrear are of long standing. . . . We are disposed
to doubt whether natives could advantageously be associated with
the European officers as judges in the ziUah courts. Men of admi-
rable acuteness and talent we certainly could command ; and in a
few years, probably, the prospect of honour and liberal emolument
would produce an abundant supply of any species of knowledge.
But moral character depends not less on the general sentiment of
the community than on the workings of the individual mind ; and
its improvement, however ultimately sure to follow, will not neces-
sarily keep pace with the progress of knowledge." Mr Sullivan,
Coimbatoor, in answer to the question, " Would you not be disposed
to place as much confidence in the natives of India as in your own
countrymen 1 " replied, " Yes, if equally well treated,*'

The pamphlet from which these extracts are taken con-
tains ninety-five closely-printed pages, but the gist of the
whole is, that while some of the witnesses trust and some
distrust the native character, nearly all agree that the

296 ENGLISH RULE AND

remuneration of native officials is wretched, and the posi-
tion ahnost a degradation. I am not, I repeat, arguing
here so much for justice to India, as for justice to British
rule. It is not possible to go on to all time governing
India on English principles ; and the first steps towards
governing it on Indian principles is to govern it partly by
Indian intellect. It may " pave our way out of India ; " but
it is infinitely better to pave the way out than allow it to
remain unpaved, and so leave anarchy and ruin behind us
when we bid adieu to India as conquerors. The time has
gone when it could be justly said that if England left
India, the sole monument of her rule would be pyramids
of beer-bottles. She has connected Bombay with Calcutta,
and Madras with both, by railway. She has lines to
both the frontiers, west and east, and branch lines are
numerous in British territory and in native states. The
great colleges, secular and missionary, represent all that is
foremost in Christendom, and ofier to India those elements
of safety and progress which would have saved Turkey
from ruin. Finally, the land has peace. It may be said —
it has been said — that all these things have the sore defect
that they are of foreign growth. That, however, is non-
sense. Christianity was of foreign growth to Britain. The
civilisation of Eome was to Britain both foreign and con-
quering. But all the same the seeds were sown and the
weird web woven ; and when Eome was in ruin and decay,
England stood with a robust young life, pushing her way
into other lands, and impressing her genius and enterprise
in perilous times upon all nations. What there is of good
in the civilisation of England, India need not fear to take.
It is merely the return of the tide of civilisation wliich
India sent out to the West generations ago. It is harder
and more brittle than when it first went out. It cannot
so easily bend or so easily mould itself into new forms.
But it may be to India Uke the omen of a great deliver-
ance and a great future, tending God only knows whither,
but assuredly in a right direction ; beyond which it will

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 297

be well for us to remain silent and blind. Sir Thomas
Munro said:^ "The main evil of our system is the de-
graded state in which we hold natives. We exclude them
from every situation of trust and emolument. We confine
them to the lowest ofl&ces, with scarcely a bare subsistence,
and even these are left in their hands from bare necessity,
because Europeans are utterly incapable of filling them.
We treat them as an inferior race of beings." Sir Charles
Napier said : " We must mix with the people, give them
justice, give them riches, give them honours, give them
share in all things until we blend with them, and become
one nation. When a half-caste or a full native can be
Governor General, we shall not hold India as a colony or
conquest, but be part inhabitants, and as numerous as will
be required to hold it as our own."

The Native Press of India has been undergoing a
fiery trial little comprehended in England. Every word
of comment it directs against any ofiBcer or any official
act is construed by some one into disafiection; and by
some into disloyalty. Even Mr Eden, who is as free as
most persons from race and other prejudices, and who cer-
tainly is friendly to Bengal, has lately spoken with severity
of the press. If I might venture so far, I would submit to
the native press of India a receipe which I think would
not fail to meet the trial, and make it the means of giving
a great free life to India. I would say: ist. Be rigor-
ously just in criticism. Do not attack a man because he
is an Englishman. Eemember that an officer, especially
of one race governing another race, has many difficulties.
Give, therefore, to every man so placed credit for a right
motive as far as charity can extend. Nay, strain the point
in his favour to the utmost, and reason on just principles.
2nd. In criticising a man or an act, keep in view some
number of Englishmen in England : say, Mr Gladstone,
Lord Salisbury, Mr Bright, Mr Edward Miall, Mr Fawcett,

^ Quoted in " Mementoes of the Goyernment and the People," by a Hindoo
(1858).

«98 ENGLISH RULE AND

Lord Derby, Sir Alexander Cockbum, Sir Henry Maine,
Sir James Stephen, and the higher leaders of the press,
not in London alone, but in the great provincial towns.
Ask the question fairly and with rigorous exactitude,
what would these men think of the criticism ? If they
would condemn it, the chances are it is wrong. If they
would approve it, fear nothing. But settle the point, that
no such men ever would approve scandal or abuse, or any-
thing tending to cause disorder. 3d. Send copies of the
papers regularly, not to London clubs, which always run
in ruts, but to the reading-rooms of London, Birmingham,
Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin,
Belfast, Newcastle, and so on; and to a few upright
journalists. Shift the venue to the great life of England,
where justice can always be had in the long-run. Then,
resolve to use as men, soberly and restrainedly, but firmly,
the honourable right conferred on the press by Sir Charles
Metcalfe, and supported by Lord Macaulay.

On behalf of the Indian press, I have no hesitation in
saying that in its higher parts it is generally characterised
by fairness, and that in the journals of a lower character,
the strength of the language used is often miscalculated
by the writers, while in neither case is it character-
istically disloyaL Nothing of all that England has
commended to India by precept and example is better
worth preservation by India than a free fearless press;
and any money spent in making that press known to the
great towns — the popular life of England — ^would be a valu-
able outlay. While, however, combating all wrong, do not
let it be forgotten that the press is a solemn trust, nowhere
more solemn than in India, and that to aid the right is even
more important than to denounce the wrong. To be on the
side of law and order is infinitely better than being on the
other side if conscience and the support of law and order can
go together. I venture to throw out these few hints in the
full light of English publicity, in the hope that they may
contribute something alike to the security and sobriety of

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA, 299

the powerful engine which, for weal or woe, England has
placed in the hands of India.

Having said so much, it is only right to add also, that
the native press should face the fact that no nation in the
position of England in India could permit her people
employed as officers to he unfairly dealt with even in the
name of a free press. The native press has in some cases
the faculty of pursuing a dispute to the end. I would
suggest that the true principle of journalism — ^and the
safeguard against many perils — ^is to fight a matter out,
even to the last trench ; but, for the sake of good neigh-
hourly feeling, to pursue it no further. The one thing
most dreaded in a newspaper in an English community is
the habit of fixing upon a man or an act for everlasting
reprobation. The fault is even commoner in English than
in Indian papers. Still it is worth mentioning, if the native
press of India would keep before it some such English
names as those I have mentioned.

I

CHAPTER XXII.

TO ENGLAND BY BRINDISI, AND FROM THE
HOOGHLY TO THE THAMES.

Having attempted in the first of these chapters to repre-
sent to some degree the impressions created on the mind
by the voyage from England to India by Marseilles, I
desire, in this concluding chapter, to complete the design
of my notes by a partial picture, first, of the return home
by Brindisi, and secondly, of that by the Hooghly to
Madras and Ceylon, and so, by Gibraltar, to the Thames.
From Marseilles the voyage was by the shores of Sicily.
From Alexandria to Brindisi it was through the Isles of
Greece ; at the time I saw them, covered with snow — a
very different scene from that in the Straits of Messina on
that summer evening referred to in the earlier chapter.

In both cases there are the same historic pathways, and
if any wonder had existed in the mind as to the intimate
relations of Eome and Greece, and of both with Spain and
Gaul, and Carthage and Egypt, it would probably before
this have given place to a greater wonder, that at least the
two fu^t should have so long been separated and able to
pursue different and independent lines of action. That
the Romans could have crossed the Great Sea to Carthage,
and the Greeks to Sicily, and even to Egypt, without
materially interfering with each other's aims, is a fact the
strangeness of which can hardly be lost sight of by any
reader of history voyaging over the Mediterranean to
Brindisi, after having voyaged over it from Marseilles.
One perceives, as no book ever can teach, how intimately
connected and yet how widely separated were the nations

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 301

that had direct access to the Mediterranean, and by
means of it to three of our four divisions of the globe.
It is as if, while looking with the bodily eye upon the
renowned sea, one found, with the eye of the mind fixed
upon history, that the sea was a magnet which had drawn
the most highly civilised as well as the most barbarous
races to a common centre, where, as nowhere else in the
whole world, a meeting ground, with, at the same time,
impassable boundaries of separation, could be secured.

No one can form any, even the most general idea, of the
future of India, who considers the subject without an
intimate relation to the Mediterranean and the Eed Sea.
That the struggles of the Arian and Turanian led to vast
waves of human beings eastward and westward from some
part of Central Asia, or the high land beyond it, is one of
the starting-points of our historical knowledge. If we can
with the eye of faith and reason see one wave of the men
of the past rolling on towards the Mediterranean from
the east, and other waves rolling in the same direction
from the north, and then the Mediterranean asserting its
place to give laws to all the world around, we shall not
merely not need food for thought on the voyage to or from
Alexandria, but we shall find a key also to the relation of
England to India.

It is not too much to say that that relation has rested
primarily on the fact that the highway from Europe to
India, from the beginning of the eighteenth century till a
comparatively recent period, was by the Cape of Good
Hope, and that England held that highway as mistress of
the seas. The ridicule thrown upon Lord Palmerston for
his opposition to the Suez Canal may or may not have
been deserved, but at least the commonest point of the
ridicule, the advantage that England before all other
nations has received from the canal, represents a very
short-sighted idea. Rightly or wrongly. Lord Palmerston
was looking beyond a time of peace, to one when the
Mediterranean Powers might be able to repeat the deeds

302 ENGUSH RULE AND

of old times. "We shall never be cut off from India while
we are the first of maritime powers, and that we shall for
a long time be so, at least, to sufficient purpose to prevent
any other power from using the seas on both sides of the
canal, is very probable. But that by some combination
of powers, we might be compelled to use the Cape route
to secure the Canal route to ourselves, or render it useless
to an enemy, is quite within the range of possibility. One
can hardly, on the Mediterranean and the Eed Sea, miss
seeing that the position of England in India is one of
the boldest ever occupied by any nation. It is bold as
regards India, and it is not less bold as regards Europe.
It is so bold, indeed, as regards both, that it will some day
be again challenged by both ; and while it has often been
a national virtue of England not to see too far into the
future to forget to provide for the present, it is one of the
highest qualities of statesmen to face all and provide for
all eventualities. We may not always be able to com-
mand the canal route, but even if that should come,
we still may be able to render the canal useless to an
enemy.

From the day-dreams that pass through the mind after
a sojourn in India, and during a voyage from the land of
the Pharaohs to Brindisi, where we find a highway leading
to imperial Eome,.the traveller from India awakes to new
scenes. Readings of early life — probably Gibbon and Vol-
ney, and Plutarch and Rollin — together with readings of
later life — perhaps Grote, and Arnold, and Eawlinson —
may blend in a picture of Greece, Home, Egypt, Arabia,
India, and Palestine.

What strange influences rest upon the mind as you bid
adieu to India at Brindisi — see the last of it when you
leave the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, and begin to
re-read, amid the enduring monuments of Foggia and
Naples, and Rome, and Venice, and Pavia, and Verona, and
Florence, and Bologna, and Milan, and Turin, of the key
to all modem history. You see an old life which never-

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 303

theless is young compared with the history of Babylon,
and Nineveh, and Egypt. You see a young life responding
to all the impulses of to-day. At Venice you, as it were,
look from the Apennines to the Balkans, to Bosnia and
Servia, and beyond them to Constantinople. On the shores
of the Bay of Naples you may read, in the clearest book
ever handed down to man in stone, the history of the
pomp and luxury of the " choice spirits " of great Eome.
Nothing that the traveller to India may have seen in India
or Egypt, or anywhere, has the same handwriting on the
wall that remains at Pompeii. Other relics of the past
may have been preserved. This alone of all that belonged
to the past is embalmed. The streets, the temples and
palaces, and tombs, and taverns, the houses of pleasure and
the houses of shame, are as distinct to the eye now as they
were in the days before the Saviour of men was bom. It
is a great lesson, if it can in any way be rounded off in one
view of ancient history and present times.

AU other scenes, however, give place to those of Eome.
You perceive at a glance what is meant by the " Eternal
City." You perceive that, whatever else you may have
seen, this is unique. You pass through miles of ruins.
You observe the Seven Hills clad in a great measure with
vineyards, and fields of com and pasture. Yet nothing
removes the impression that you are looking on the Etem^d.
City. The Capitol and the Tarpeian Eock ; the road along
which the Apostle Paul travelled ; the dismal Catacombs ;
the grandeur of the great Church of St Peter's, and the
exquisite beauty of the Church of St Paul's, peerless as a
whole among churches, are at once memorials of the most
imperial of cities, and of a system by means of which, from
that city, the world of men was moi*e nearly welded into
one than it ever was before or has been since. The Coli-
seum, with the palaces of the Csesars close at hand, has
a voice in every stone. You see whence the trumpets
sounded when the Emperors went forth, with all the pomp
of the empire of the world, to witness the doom of prisoners ;

304 ENGLISH RULE AND

the seats of the Caesars ; the cells from whence the sounds
of revelry in the palaces could be heard by the doomed ;
the gates through which the Emperor passed ; the door-
ways through which the prisoners were driven to death, and
through which their bodies were dragged out of sight. All
is there, and almost as real as when the cup of the empire
was being filled to the brim. If you turn from St Peter's
in its grandeur, you may not be far away from the little
workshops where Eoman genius still reigns. You may
drive from those awful lines of coffins in the labyrinth of
the Catacombs to the beautiful English cemetery where
Shelley and John Gibson lie, and where you may find
perhaps as many vulgar epitaphs, on the tombs of lords
and ladies, and shopmen and shopmen's wives, as could be
found in any cemetery of the same size in the world.
Everything in the English Cemetery at Kome is beautiful
to the eye, if you can forget the tombstones.

In Eome a man may feel as a verity the greatest of
the turning-points of history ; the rise of the Church of
Christ, when from the blood of the martyrs grew the free-
dom and the new life of nations. In this sense, coming
from the images of Brahma and Vishnu, and the mosques,
and the marble palaces, and the tombs of India and of
Egypt, an influence more subtle than any of them creeps,
one may say, into the very soul in Imperial Eome. You
carry it with you to Florence and Milan, to the quiet
beauty of Bologna, to Turin, to the unchanging beauty of
the Alps, the survivor of aU the dynasties and empires ;
the same, in much, yet not in all, as in the days of Han-
nibal. The Mont Cenis tunnel is essentially a new thing,
telling of a different age, of a civilisation which has eaten
up all others, and which still remains young.

The Alps are seen to advantage when you can compare
them "Nvith the Indian Ghfits. In one respect they are
similar. The scenery in both is as varied as the sliifting
slides of a panorama ; now grand, now quiet and simple ;
now leading into an apparently bottomless gorge, clad with

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 305

tangled many-coloured verdure; now looking upward to
mountains similarly clad and towering to the clouds. But
the Ghfits, with all their marvellous verdure, are like a
section of chaos bordering on some of the dimmest if most
restless of popidations, while the Alps tell of bright and
cheerf'ul peoples whose industry has clad the mountain
sides with vineyards, and built cottages like eyries in
the far-up crags and crevices of mountains whose tops
are in the snow. There are parts of the line along the
Alps, as there are on the lines of the Ghjlts, where timid
people close their eyes. But he or she who can look
calmly from a giddy height will not miss seeing a furlong
of these scenes. Taking the whole from the landing at
Brindisi to the entry into the cities of France as one pic-
ture, and comparing the picture with that of India from
the landing at Bombay to the departure therefrom — the
two ends of an interval which may seem to crowd a de-
cade of years into one year, — I know not what may not be
possible to be read by any one who can feel his own little-
ness in \iew of the wonderful works of God — the moon
and stars which He created; the rolling seasons; the
riches of nature ; the dark problems of history ; the fearful
darkness that rests on the infancy and the lot of man.

From the Hooghly to the Thames is, as compared with
the Overland route, like a dip into the life of another
planet. Say that the health of an intended voyager has
been shaken, and that he has been anxious as well as ill,
the embarkation at Calcutta in a vessel whose direct desti-
nation is London may resemble a glimpse of paradise.
Many a wearied Anglo-Indian has found that there are two
sides even to " the comforts of the Peninsidar and Oriental
service." Tliere are the changes, the examinations of lug-
gage, the fresh life, gladsome enough to the fresh mind,
the reverse of gladsome to the mind that is not fresh or
free. In any case, the direct canal voyage is a new and
altogether different experience.

The evening of the 24th November 1874 was just such

u

3o6 ENGLISH RULE AND

an one as a man, set free from India, might have chosen
for his first step in the direction of home. The gladsome
cool season had fairly begun, and when a few friends had
departed, and the fine canal steamer had dropped down
from the jetties of Calcutta to Garden Beach, and anchored
in a quiet spot nearly opposite to the palace of the ex-
King of Oude, the stillness on the Hooghly was almost
solemn. Higher on the river there had been incessant
turmoil Tlie great bridge talked of for a generation had
at last been opened, quietly, by the modest engineer, Mr
Lesley, whose only anxiety appeared to resolve itself into
escaping display. He had connected Calcutta with the
North Western Provinces, and with a great part of Bengal,
from which it had been divided. When the bridge was
opened, it was at once and henceforth crowded with people
in conveyances and on foot, laughing and talking of the
great new thing that the year 1874 would carry into his-
tory. The lights flitted backward and forward in the
grounds of the ex-King, and only the song of a crew of
boatmen, or the plash of a fish in the water, or the steady
step of the officer on watch, occasionally broke the stillness
which, in other respects, remained unbroken till nearly
day-dawn.

All departures from the Hooghly in the same class of
ships are much alike, and there are people who affirm
that all scenes on the Hooghly are alike to all persons ;
but there they are mistaken. A duller river in some
respects could not be conceived ; but in charge of an intel-
ligent captain, at once a good sailor and acquainted with
books and life, and a pilot who can speak of what he has
seen, much may be learned from Calcutta to the Sand
Heads. With a captain of this kind, Captain Cosens (rf
the " Hindoo," and two such pilots, the one in charge of
the vessel, the other a passenger to the pilot brigs, we
steamed down between the two low shores of the Hooghly,
a distance of a hundred and twenty miles to the Sand
Heads, the pilot station, where two pilot brigs (the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 307

** outer " and the " inner *' brig) are anchored, and where also
the river empties itself into the Bay of Bengal.

The Hooghly pilot in his own case represents a great
history, dating from the old " Covenanted ** days when he
met the storied Indiaman at the end of her long Cape
voyage, and perhaps learned that all Europe was at war,
or told of dangers and difficulties and bloodshed in India.
Those were great days, as a few old shipwrights, eking out
the last embers of life on the banks of the Thames, can tell.
The enterprise that set in at BlackwaU when the Indiamen
appeared at Gravesend had its exact counterpart in the
scenes at Fort "William when they arrived at the Sand
Heads, The sailing vessels were to old times what the
Peninsular and Oriental steamers are to these. They
carried the most illustrious passengers — great soldiers and
statesmen, ladies who had long been separated from their
husbands, servants of the Company who left England
young, and would not return to it again till they were old
and grey. The Hooghly pilot in charge of such interests
held his head loftily. He had not entered" the service
without great influence, but once admitted to it by cove-
nant with the mighty gentlemen of Leadenhall Street, he
could not be removed save for gross inefficiency, or some-
thing as important. He rose from grade to grade, till, after
twenty-five or thirty years, he became a branch pilot, the
top of his profession. He wore a gold-lace cap, and often
kid-gloves, as beseemed a man who might have the honour
to explain to a favourite of the India House some subject
which the representatives of the Council of Fort William
had not quite mastered. Moreover, he commanded the
ship. Much of this has gone. Men high in rank, unless
for the comfort or health of the voyage, return home by
Bombay, and the " covenant " has been worn to a very thin
resemblance of what it once was. Yet the pilot, if shorn
of his more gaudy decorations, has still his old power. He
is captain for the time. He has vastly larger vessels than
of old, and though he has the help of steam, he has not

3o8 ENGUSH RULE AND

always that help in steering, and sometimes with hand-
steering is unable, as in our own case, to bring the vessel's
head to a right course in a treacherous and uncertain, river.
Some of these are facts that can never pass away, and these
always secure to the pilot his right place and dignity. The
captain of a vessel, however, is either a more than ordi-
narily good Christian or a more than ordinarily apathetic
sailor if he can without a gleam of pleasure view the pilot-
boat pushed away from the vessel's side. It is a sad failing
of most captains to prefer commanding their own vessels.
Half-way down the river there is a good anchorage
ground at Calpee ; and there, with a fine long night and
a monotonous outlook, we learned somewhat of earlier
times. "We had passed near to Calcutta the "famine
steamers," which had evinced the irradicable propensity to
go only with the stream. Farther down we were pointed
to a shelving sandbank, on which many a fine vessel had
been lost with all on board. Of scenery, in the commonly
understood meaning of the term, there is nothing. You
see, however, that you have been skirting the vast rice-
fields, terminating at the vaster jungle of the Sunder-
bunds, where, in spite of the deadly rifle, the Bengal tiger
still rules as king. On a road through this jungle poor tra-
vellers in droves from the coast often began, and did not
always end, a journey of sixteen days to Calcutta. The
impediments were robbers, tigers, snakes, and a fever which
hung, and still hangs, on the low land of the Sunderbunds.
At last a tug-boat having been sent out from England for
some purpose, for which she proved unfitted, it occurred
to the owner, or the representative of the owner, to try to
induce the walking traders to travel by river and steam.
The experiment was a great success. To passengers were
added cargoes — ^rice, hides, horns, and much besides ; and
the one vessel grew into an imposing fleet, which has now
sharp native competition. Some of the vessels of both lines
we passed. We were pointed also to several of the vessels
of the British India Steamship Company, which has a sug-

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 309

gestive Listory. Begun at first by a comparatively poor
man, and upheld by his perseverance in the face of great
difficulties, it had in this year (1874) more than forty
vessels afloat, and its name was potent and respected on
many seas. We passed, thirty miles or so from Calcutta,
a steamer freighted with actors, actresses, and barmaids
for the new theatre in wliich Calcutta was so interested.
Tlie theatrical people had the vessel, but with the pro-
verbial generosity of their profession, and their well-known
partiality to the pulpit, they had allowed, it was said, a few
spare berths to missionaries. Considerably to the eastward
was the Mutlah river, and the almost deserted site of Port
Canning, one of the greatest failures of mercantile Cal-
cutta.

I had visited and spent some hours at Port Canning in the
season of 1872, and, by the kind help of a lady and gentle-
man who were so good as to accompany me, had learned
the history of a project which, I fancy, is not yet irrevo-
cably doomed. The idea of the projectors of the new port
was to escape the difficult navigation of the Hooghly by
discharging the vessels a little above the mouth of the
Mutlah, and taking the freights to Calcutta by railway.
They forgot or ignored the enormous vested interests of
the capital of India. The town was laid out; the shares
wxre taken at enormous premiums ; the principal pro-
jector was for a time a miniature King Hudson, the very
stones turning to gold at his feet. Then there came a
reaction. The pilots who had been educated to the
Hooghly did not know the lesser river, and there were
some shipping disasters, which were laid to the charge of
the Mutlah. Miniature King Hudson thereupon found
the gold returning to stone.

The little party with which I visited Port Canning in
1 872 started from a shed which served for a railway station
in Calcutta, and on a line which was grass-grown. "We
accomplished successfully in two hours a distance of twenty-
eight miles, gliding noiselessly through a district covered

3IO ENGLISH RULE AND

with paddy, a great, and, so far as we could see, boundless
sea of rice. We found the "town" composed of a very
few habitable houses ; a number of abandoned new houses
and warehouses; an exceedingly fine and finely fitted up
rice-mill idle, the property of the company whose faith
had been shown by these costly works ; a good stone house
for the manager of the mill ; a magistrate's house, prettily
situated ; a fine river with a splendid anchorage ; well-
built jetties, deserted and railed off from the land side ; in
fact, a city of the dead. A new company, chiefly formed
in Bombay under Parsee management, had re-bought the
property; but the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Sir
George Campbell, stepped in and closed the port, and took
away the buoys. The company pleaded in vain. They
had, they said, " taken over from the old company 351,146
beegahs of rice land (the beegah 1600 yards), had brought
one-fourth of it into cultivation, and could cultivate the
remaining three-fourths at a cost of from ten shillings to
fourteen shillings a beegaL There was no mill in all
India, they pleaded, so large and fine as theirs. Sir
George, however, was inexorable. It remains for some
future, perhaps for the present, Lieutenant Governor to
say whether or no Port Canning shall die.

On the evening of the 26th our *" king had his own
again." The pilots departed to their brigs ; two more added
to about twenty skilled and in some cases educated men
usually kept on the station, and the good ship " Hindoo "
bounded into the Bay of Bengal. At noon on the 27th,
Friday, we were 188 miles from the pilot brigs, the por-
poises and other fish of the rolling and tumbling species
accompanying us in countless numbers and never-ending
gymnastics. On the 27th a plug was blown from some-
where in the ship with an explosion as of a mine, followed
by a screaming of firemen, a storming of the captain, and
a detention of three hours, the companionable fish making
up their minds to wait for the repairs, and see their larger
brother some distance further on his way. When the

KA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 31 1

vessel started, so did the fish, in the best of good-fellowship,
rolling grandly from the crests to the hollows of the waves,
and rising again in the wildest and freest sport that ever
the heart of man conceived. On the morning of the 29th,
a beautiful Sunday morning, we anchored amid a fleet of
shipping in Madras Eoads, and remained there two full
days.

I had seen much of India, but there was something in
Madras which contrasted with what is found in other
places. I thought, as compared with Calcutta and Bombay,
it was homelier, more united, and more genial. In Calcutta
there is often an imgenerous spirit of depreciation, as if
every one but the person to whom you speak were a fool
or a rogue. " The Commander-in-chief is all well enough,
but — ." "Sir Henry Norman has — ^yes, beyond doubt
he has a wonderful memory, but — ." " So-and-so is detes-
table ; " and so on. I did not notice this in Madras. I had
occasion to mention Sir P. Haines, the Commander-in-chief
at Madras, now Commander-in-chief in India, and I heard
nothing that was not in his praise. Dr Cornish, the sanitary
inspector, was the best sanitary inspector anywhere ; and
Dr Cornish deserved the praise. But I wondered never-
theless, and all the more because I had heard the very
opposite quality ascribed to Madras. "The mission-
aries ! " — " Yes, what of them ? we have been imusually
fortunate in our missionaries." "The Catholic priests!"
— "They have an immense influence and do great
good." Perhaps my experience was exceptional, but at
all events it was not an experience of wrangling, frac-
tiousness, and calumny. The club at Madras I thought
the most complete in some respects of any I ever saw.
It provides for everything relating to business or pleasure,
and the ladies have a special department, where they can
see each other while their male friends are engaged else-
where. The green hedges and hedgerows resemble those
of Surrey rather than anything in Calcutta.

In topics of conversation, dso, a Madras drawing-room

31 2 ENGLISH RULE AND

seemed to me to differ from the usual drawing-rooms of
India; the conversation related more to permanent in-
terests. The great struggle of several generations of
English residents in Madras haa been for a harbour.
Year after year, with intervals of a few years, the destruc-
tion of life and property has been an ever-recurring
calamity. It has of late become possible to forecast a
cyclone, but even then the only possible signal is — '^ Put
out to sea," There is no shelter ; no chance but in meet-
ing and breasting the storm. The Madras people argued
the case of their harbour with great earnestness, and not
as people there one day and removed the next. There was
iio good harbour, they said, from Comorin to Calcutta on
the east coast of India, and none from Comorin to Cochin,
where there was a natural harbour on the west coast.
They pointed to the fact that Madras was the centre of the
telegraph system to China and Australia ; and they asserted
that if they had a harbour, it would as certainly become
also the centre of the China and Australian postal system
— a not unreasonable assertion, when it is considered in
relation to the fact that Madras and Bombay had a rail-
way communication which can be made in about twenty-
four hours, while from Bombay to Calcutta was about
sixty-five hours. That Madras is the centre of the bank-
ing system of the south-east of India is equally beyond
doubt. At the end of 1874, the conversations and projects
of many years had arrived at a practical point, and a har-
bour was proposed to be made at once, and paid for by
a tonnage duty.

I had observed long before this, in the Administration
Reports, the peculiar position taken by the people of the
Madras Presidency with respect to model farms, and the
naturalisation of seeds and animals. The Indian Govern-
ment, with a special view to the improvement of tools and
implements of agriculture, and of all that relates to the
cultivation of the soil, had formed an agricultural depart-
ment which had done much good, but mostly with the

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 3 1 5

initiation of district officers. In Madras, on the contrary,
the improvement of agriculture is taken up by private
persons, and fostered and encouraged both by precept and
example. Cows, sheep, seeds, fowls, tools, aU manner of
living things for the use of man, and all the appliances
whereby the earth is made to yield her increase, are sub-
jects of interest altogether apart from Government action.

Connected also with social life and intercourse is the
servant system. In Bombay the best servants are the
half-caste men. In Bengal the house-servant is a Hindoo,
and the table-servant a Mohammedan, and in both cases is
often selected, not because he speaks English, but because
he professes entire ignorance of it. Sahib feels more com-
fortable if he knows that his talk at dinner is not under-
stood. The Madrassee is often engaged and taken to
Calcutta because he does know English, and without that
knowledge he would have a difficulty in being engaged in
Madras. There a great number of the servants are Chris-
tians — mostly, I think. Catholic — and in any case are free
from the caste difficulties which prevail in JBengal. They
are generally excellent servants. The author of the " Folk
Songs of Southern India " says that the people not Chris-
tians are not by any means what some missionaries have
painted them ; that they in many cases believe in eternal
life, and inculcate purity as the chief duty of man. Seve-
ral of the " Folk Songs " confirm the author's assertion, and
some are very beautiful. I may say also that from all I
saw I believe the author's views to be the truth.

The boatmen of Madras are a wild, hardy race, compared
with whom the Bengalee boatmen are civilised. They
speak English, and speak boldly, and soon convince you
that the men of the river and those of this exposed coast
are essentially different beings. Of the population as a
whole Dr Cornish says in his Census Report : " There are
in the Presidency about 11,610,000 persons who speak the
Telugu language ; Tamil, 14,715,000; Canarese, 1,699,000;
Malayalum, 2,324,000; Tulu, 29400; Ooriya and Hill

314 ENGLISH RULE AND

languages, 640,OCX); and that of the whole population,"
28,863,978 are Hindoos, 1,857,857 Mohammedans, 490,299
Native Christians, 14,505 Europeans, 26,374 East Indians
or Eurasians, 21,254 Jains, and 6910 undistinguished as to
nationality or religion." The Neilgheny Mountains I did
not see, but Dr Shortt, in an admirable description of the
" Hill Kanges of India," ascribes to these favourite moun-
tain retreats almost every kind of fruit and vegetable, and
a charming climate, in which Europeans can work out-
doors all the day through.

I have referred in an earlier chapter to the dreadful
calamity that has now fallen upon Madras, and which bids
fair to devastate the Presidency. It would be foolish to
take advantage of such a calamity as a peg upon which to
hang any crotchets for the prevention of famine for all
future time. Whenever news arrives in England that
people are dying in thousands for want of food, imme-
diately the columns of the newspapers are filled with,
suggestions as to how the famine might have been pre-
vented, and how all other famines may be prevented. I
think this course is worth very little, and is often banefuL
The point now is to feed the people. The next point is
to raise the general condition of the people. It is not by
mere irrigation, or by railways, or by the extension of trade,
but by all of them, and by a hundred nameless things that
famines must be prevented. A skilful doctor will remove
a local ailment by giving general tone to the whole system,
and so will a sound statesman. More than this it is
difficult to say reasonably at a time when thousands are
dying. It does seem, however, as if these famines were
likely to try British rule in India to the very core. They
can, I repeat, be averted by honest and unselfish states-
manship ; and honest and unselfish statesmanship would
also be to England the highest self-interest.

Leaving Madras on Monday evening, the light of Col-
ombo came in sight on "Wednesday night, but it was too
dark to anchor, and the vessel was kept well out to sea.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 3 1 5

"She was brought to anchor with the first strealcs of dawn,
and all who had no duties on board were soon in catamarans
and outrigger canoes on the way to the shore. It would
be difficult to conceive without having experienced the
luxury of going to bed on board a fine steamboat, with
the consciousness that by day-dawn in the morning you
will, without any efibrt of your own, be carried into new
scenes. You dine comfortably aud rest cheerfully while
the vessel's head is put off from land. Then you are
rocked to sleep in the hope of such a treat early next
morning as a home-staying man never knows. I suppose
there is not in the whole range of creation any luxury to
equal such a night and morning under such circumstances
on the sea. All the tailors, and milliners, and perfumers
of Bond Street, and all the cooks, and jewellers, and wine
merchants, and shoeblacks, and footmen, and footwomen
could not produce anything to give a spark of the gladness
of spirit that these healthy scenes create.

From Madras to Ceylon is a transition greater than the
mere distance in miles might seem to indicate. It is a
change from an imperial to a strictly colonial govern-
ment. Mr Gregory, of Galway Pacquet fame, was King
of Ceylon. On this particular day the captain of an
English vessel lying in the roadstead was seized by the
Cingalese police, for, as we learned, an absurd debt, which
he thought the agents of his vessel had paid, and the
captain, in his indignation, knocked down the police-
man, with the result of a great uproar, a nominal com-
mittal to prison, and a fine. While the peace of Her
Majesty the Queen was being endangered. King Gregory
passed by on the other side. Lord Northbrook, in Cal-
cutta, would probably have stopped and asked what it all
meant; but Lord Northbrook would not perhaps have
dared to do so in Ceylon.

We had only a day in which to see the churches and
institutions, the shops and people of Colombo, but it
chanced to be a long day. The shops contain in many

3i6 ENGLISH RULE AND

cases curious conglomerations of mixed goods, from ladies*
embroidery to the tackle of a ship, and they were very
extensive, as they are also curiously indicative of a colonial
society, possessing all the wants of England, and compelled
to supply those wants by importation. No person whose
experience is altogether that of English towns can have an
accurate conception of how much this fact involves. The
tone of the conversation everywhere in Colombo revolved
so materially on one subject, that before the day closed a
stranger could hardly be blamed if he came to the conclu-
sion that within the previous twenty-four hours all flesh,
and every creeping thing, and all the beasts of the field
had been turned into coffee. Of course a drive through a
most beautiful country dispelled the delusion, but I refer
to the impression created by what one heard inside. The
first and the last word was coffee; Some Dutch conclave,
at Kotterdam or somewhere, was keeping down prices, and
bidding fair to ruin English planters. One grew angry
with the Dutch conclave, and wished that it had but one
neck, and that neck in Colombo. One heard, too, of the
planter's " hard lot." How he personally mustered and set
his coohes to work at five o'clock every morning, and then
rode over his plantation till nightfall, nmners preceding
him with his luncheon. How the land had to be cleared
and " filled in," and a house built, and a nursery made,
and the vexatious markets watched, and the health and
well-being of the coolies carefully provided for according to
the law of India, and the at least equally keen law of the
planter's own interest. The life is by no means an easy
one certainly, but the property often becomes very valu-
able.

A frightful disease was at this time raging among the
poorer natives (not coolies) in one part of the island, and
had existed some years, it was said, before any European
help had been sent to the district. One of the officers then
reported that " the tanks or pools of water, of which there
are many, emit a putrid smell ; . . . that the water itself

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 3 1 7

is black as ink, and teems with animalciilae." Eeading
this, one felt inclined, as was natural, to sing with good
Bishop Heber of the "spicy breezes that blow from
Ceylon's Isle — ^where every prospect pleases, and only man
is vile." Yet that there are balmy breezes one felt at
morning and evening, when the breeze was off the land.
One was not suffered to miss the fact that Ceylon was
" the first colony to relieve the mother coimtry of the cost
of defence ; " that the revenue was increasing ; that the
railway from Colombo to Kandy — eighty-seven miles —
paid eight per cent. ; and that towards " the wilderness of
Adam's Creek," fifteen years earlier accounted the great
forest reserve of the Crown, you might at this time from
one spot look upon 40,cxx> acres of land under coffee. On
the water you had the primitive catamarans, or outrigger
canoes — ^logs of wood hollowed, and prevented from over-
turning by spars being laid across the log till they rested
on each side of it on the water. It was pleasant also, in
a rather rough sea, to find that the boat could be effectu-
ally steadied by a man sitting on the far-off end of the
spar, with his feet dangling in the water; and it was
interesting to know that if the water grew rougher two
men, and if it grew rougher still, three would take the
place of the one ; and that the war of the elements would
be known as a "one man," "two man," or "three man
gale."

In quiting Ceylon one really left India, for Aden is
only India politically. The porpoises and bonito again
awaited us in mighty hosts, and skipped away before and
behind on the big waves that rolled down the Straits of
Manaar. Steadily the good ship threaded her way along
the north coasts of the Maldives, and through the maze
of the Laccadives (" the hundred thousand ") coral islands ;
mere rocks, bleak and barren in some cases, covered with
verdure in others, governed by laws with which English-
men have no concern. The large island of Minacoy, cre-
dited by Findley's " Maritime Directory " with a popula-

3i8 ENGLISH RULE AND

tion of 3CXX5, sends yearly to the Governor of Ceylon a
tribute of cocoa-nuts and fish in return for his august pro-
tection. We passed very close to Minacoy, but saw only
here and there a stray representative of the 3000 to vs^hom
belong this lonely southern isle. Three or four men, fish-
ing in the quiet waters, rested on their oars to watch the
leviathan steamer ; a little farther three or four more did
likewise; in a green creek a few little children were
at play — one of the loneliest of all human scenes. Not a
hut was in sight ; vessels avoid, and rarely have need to
touch land ih this strangely studded part of the ocean,
where a huge island, if not a part of the great continent,
is slowly growing by the ceaseless toil of those inconceiv-
able millions of tiny insects. The fish leap in the water
in a silence as of eternity, and sea-birds of many names
cover the surface of the ocean for miles. One pauses in
such a scene — one may well pause in awe. One wonders
what the world, and the things of the world, may be when
these "hundred thousand islands" have become one —
what civilisations may have been swept away, what new
inventions may have come to light, what old inventions
may have been lost, what progress may have been made
towards that great time when the knowledge of the one
Lord of all — ^the Father in every age adored — ^shall cover
the earth as the waters cover the sea.

One wonders too what those lonely fishermen think of
our big ship, and of the lands from whence she came ;
what possible conception one could convey to them of that
great Thames to which we are every hour approaching
nearer, and of which they probably never even heard the
name ; what they can think, if they do think, of the pur-
pose of the large vessels they see driving eastward and
westward, and northward and southward, on this great
ocean highway to India, to China, to Japan, to Australia.
Indeed, one may well pause. One hardly, if one desired
it, could escape the solemnity of the scene. When the
shades of night begin to fall the solenmity deepens. One

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 319

sees tlie little islets wrapped up in the same great mantle
that, at a different hour, will fold itself around London,
and Paris, and Eome, and New York. Walk the deck
long enough, and we see the rise of the Southern Cross,
and the constellations only known by name in that dis-
tant northern land to which we are bound ; and while the
sea around is as one blaze of phosphorescent light, it may
be possible to once again lose the mind in a dream, the
spell and charm of which may remain for many years,
perhaps for ever, as a childlike conception of the wonderful
manifestation of life and death on earth.

Later in the voyage — the Maldives and Laccadives now
far behind — our captain called me to see a curious spot
on the sim — a remarkable spot, he said, which, often as
he had " taken the sim," he never had seen before. And
it was a really curious spot — ^moving, too, as if to tantalise
us, and then be gone. Alas ! for any claim we might have
been disposed to make to scientific knowledge (and it is
dignified to make such a claim, at least by silence), we
had been looking upon the transit of Venus, yet had
known it not till too late to share the pleasure with any
other person. The captain brought out his marked alma-
nack — ^when too late. Yes, it was all there, and the place
clearly marked with a big black cross. We had seen yet
not seen, observed closely enough yet not comprehended,
that we were looking on a phenomenon that the silent and
awful laws of nature never will afford us an opportunity
of seeing again. It came to us as a mere chance, and then
fled like a shadow, as it had come and gone in the genera-
tions of old, and as it will come and go in generations to
come.

Passing over the lonely desert of the Indian Ocean —
lonely alike by day and night, yet abounding in both with
beautiful sights — we discerned in the broad daylight, and
approached in a swelling but not boisterous sea, the bleak
rocks and bare sandhills of Cape Guardafui, the dreary
outlook of Africa to the East ; the greeting also of Africa,

320 ENGLISH RULE AND

but often as the greeting of an octopus, to the westward-
bound vessel "Is it not a real shame and disgrace tc
England," our captain said, taking his telescope from his
eye, " that in spite of all the disasters and loss of life here,
the Government will not go to the slight cost of putting up a
light on Cape Guardafui ? Sir Bartle Frere drew attention
forcibly to the imminent danger and necessity, and hh
arguments were enforced almost immediately by some
dreadful wrecks; yet nothing has been done." Since
then, nearly three years later, the arguments have been
still further enforced ; this very year a long list of wrecks
has been so far completed by the loss of the " Meikong '
and the " Cashmere." Probably something may now be
done. Cape Guardafui is on the direct highway of some
of the most important trades represented by some of the
largest ships in the world ; and in certain conditions of the
atmosphere cannot be seen till the ship is close upon land
On a dark night, in a stormy sea, there is no escape what-
ever for a vessel that has, by any of those chances foi
which no skill of seamanship can fully provide, been
carried too near Cape Guardafui. Close upon Aden, yet
far enough distant to render any ready help from Aden
absolutely out of the question; on a coast where the
people are thoroughly barbarous (though not always, it ia
said, unkindly, provided the person ship\\Tccked is willing to
act on the principle of the Greek philosopher and claim no
more of his property than he can carry about with him), the
plea of our sailors, passengers, merchants, and all concerned,
is irresistible ; and if a bishop or a governor general were
driven on the coast and lost, the light would be granted
without any delay. After the lessons of this year it will
indeed be a crying shame if the winter should pass over
without a light on Cape Guardafui. Surely we will not
any longer let it be said of us, that while we spare no cost
to secure a military or naval station, we gnidge tlie smallest
outlay for one of the clearest duties of humanity. Of
course the light would need protection ; but it could have

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 32 1

that protection ; and no nation would be jealous of our
new station.

Taking in coal at Aden, we voyaged once more along
the Eed Sea, passing a French man-of-war engaged in gun-
practice, passing also ships of many nations, on peaceful
voyages of many names ; spending Christmas Day in sight
of the coast of Arabia, the border-land of that wherein the
mighty deeds represented by Christmas Day were done.
In the canal we ran very closely past a Dutch troop-ship
bound for Acheen, and noticed especially what a fine body
of young and stalwart troops she carried. A little farther
we were ordered to stop for the mail steamer to pass ; the
steamer, I found, in which I had made the out- voyage, and
we exchanged cordial greetings, almost at speaking dis-
tance. At Port Said we had a view of human life at its
lowest; I should say that no wickeder or more lawless
port could be found. We voyaged along the shores of
Tripoli and Algeria, and opened the year 1875 amid
mighty big waves, which rolled the ship from beam-end
to beam-end. In the darkness of a very dark night a sail
was carried away in advance of the ship with a report as
of a battery of cannon. Yet after a time use became
" second nature," and people ate and drank, and laughed
and talked, and tried to calculate the height of the big
waves and the depth of the valleys beneath. From the
turmoil of the storm we steamed into the quiet shelter of
the Bay of Gibraltar.

And now, if an Englishman were at all given to enthu-
siasm, he might take for himself a wide and glowing re-
trospect of what he had seen and learned of England's
rule in India, and her place among nations. Writing in
sober prose, however, I shall aim at little more than to
bring this narrative as speedily as possible to a close. No
one of ordinary reading could well pass over the history
of the Rock of Gibraltar ; its relation of old to Phoenician
and Carthagenian commerce, to Koman, Visigoth, Moorish,
and Spanish deeds in arms. In India I had heard Gwalior

X

322 ENGLISH RULE AND

spoken of as an inland Gibraltar, which indeed was not a
bad comparison, though it is, after all, as if one compared
the Caspian with the Mediterranean. The town of Gib-
raltar is chiefly remarkable for its mixed population, and
the strictness of the military laws. There are an ex-
change, a club, a hospital. Catholic and Protestant cathe-
drals, a good library, and an interesting museum. Inside
you can ride very speedily over the neutral ground to the
Spanish lines. Seawards, you may cross to Ceuta and
Tangier.

It is the Rock, however, rising from the Mediterranean
on the one side, and from the Atlantic on the other, over
a bay filled with shipping, and with an outlook, as it were,
to both east and west — ^to Bombay even, and to New
York — that gives Gibraltar its place in the history and
interest of men. Towering 1250 feet above where your
vessel lies, and with a surface, or series of surfaces, of
about three miles, you find the Rock of Gibraltar to be
one complete mass of stupendous fortification, and you can
easily understand that nothing in the world compares with
it for strength and completeness. The story of how this
completeness was attained is simple. First, you perceive
that the rock is admirably adapted for a concentration of
engineering skill and ability, and that the fortresses stand
alone, commanding everywhere, conmianded from nowhere.
Secondly, GibnUtar fell at last to a strong and warlike
race, which knew how to go steadily on doing its work in
its own way, and neither asking nor waiting for the per-
mission of its neighbours to fortify afresh, and to continue
fortifying year after year. Thirdly, it belongs to a people
who not merely command the sea, but who also possess
the largest amount of the most highly cultivated and
perfected engineering skill of the time. Lastly, it has
been made the sole business of able governors and selected
ofiQcers to find new means of supplying strength to the
famous stronghold — ^means which have been found from
year to year, with slow, persistent, and continuous labour.

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 323

and practically irrespective of cost. It would be a marvel
and a shame if, with all these circumstances in its favour,
the Rock of Gibraltar were not, as far aa men can deter-
mine, impregnable. You wander through galleries and
batteries in the solid rock, some closed, some open, all
constructed in such a way that the assailants who cap-
tured one or more would merely find the way to certain
destruction. Passing along a gallery, you come to a bat-
tery ; inspecting a battery, you find an entrance to a gal-
lery; climbing from gallery to gallery, and battery to
battery, you reach some important summit. In all cases
you perceive that there is no possibility for any lodgment
for an invader unless he can, by some miracle of war, take
the principal of the fortifications at once. In fissures of
rock, in casemate chambers and halls, on plateaus and in
galleries alike, you read the one lesson, that they who
would wrench Gibraltar from British hands must com-
mand the sea. It is a fitting place at which to end the
notes of a tour or a residence in India. The flag that flies
here flies also at Aden, at Bombay, at Ceylon, at Madras,
at Calcutta, over the marble palaces of Delhi, and over
the graves of Lucknow and Cawnpore. It is the flag of
the strong, and, when need arises, of the aggressive.
When it is borne by men of another kind, men who doubt
and hesitate in the face of an enemy, or talk of yielding
to any power save that of justice, some other race may
assert the right to hold the mightiest fortress in the world.
That day, however, has not yet come. We are not edu-
cated to see too far, to provide for events too far in the
future. The law of our warfare, if warfare is inevitable,
can still be reduced to the simple principle, that where a
captain has any doubt aa to his orders let him run his
vessel alongside that of an enemy and he cannot be wrong.
Whatever the circumstances, moreover, under which certain
deeds of war were done in the past, there can be no doubt
that we hold Gibraltar to-day in the interest of civilised
nations. It belongs, and will continue to belong, only

324 ENGLISH RULE AND

to the strong. But there is more than strength needed
and implied in the occupation. It must continue to be
lield for the general well-being of peaceful nations. One
of the first conditions of unchallenged occupation is, that
no one shall be able to show logically that Gibraltar could
be in better — that is, more just and honourable — hands.
I submit also to the reader that the same law underlies
the rule of England in India. Some people tell us that
there is in India no such thing as Native Opinion ; but
they are in error. There is Native Opinion, voiceful in
some cases, dumb in others ; in both lying at the founda-
tion of English Bule. This fact may not always be ap-
parent, but it will be recorded in history as one of the
certainties of the present time. The greatest despots in
the East have found in the end that they ruled by the
strength of Opinion, and that when that failed, their sabres
became blunted. How much more does the rule apply to
a free nation professing to govern on just and righteous
principles.

We steamed from Gibraltar as the sun was setting, but
following him sharply by the Strait, we saw him set the
second time in the Atlantic. Then skirting the coast of
Portugal, and passing pleasantly through the Bay of
Biscay, and round the North Foreland, and the Isle of
Sheppey, we came to the old anchorage of the days of
Clive and Hastings at Gravesend. A hundred and twenty
years have gone since Plassey, and the habits of life are
vastly changed. We can only now imagine the feelings
of the people who landed at Gravesend after a Cape
voyage in the renowned Indiaman. No telegraphic mes-
sages met them on their way. The king might have been
ever so long dead, or the nation at war, for aught they
knew, till the pilot arrived on board, and even then private
news had stiU to be learned. Those hundred and twenty
years since Plassey have brought other changes. British
India is now an unnecessary term. The Empire extends
from the mountains in the north to the Southern Ocean,

NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 325

and the ruling Princes of India pay tribute, and acknow-
ledge the sovereignty of the Queen. Our telegraphic
communication is such that, in my own case, messages
from the interior of India to London outstripped the march
of the sun ; that is, leaving, say, at eleven o'clock, Indian
time, they were in England at, say, ten minutes before eleven
English time. Our steam-boat service, in case of war, is
unapproached in efficiency by any in the world. The
British army in India is allowed to be excellent. The
native army is at once a strength and a weakness accord-
ingly as it is dealt with. The interests and good faitli of
the Princes go hand in hand. Whether, with all these
facts in favour of English rule, that rule is in itself more
secure, is hidden in the darkness of times yet to come.
Whether the officers who can run away to England for a two
months* holiday are more efficient officers than those who
could not take more than one furlough to England in
less than twenty years, remains to be seen when the test
again comes. It also remains to be seen whether the
competitive examinations — the only possible rule now —
secure men equal to those of the system of patronage,
and whether the idea of creating " careers," to be opened
by book knowledge, has or has not impaired the sense of
responsibility ? That rules of seniority would be set aside
in time of danger is as certain as that I am writing these
lines. Whether it ought not to be tempered even more
than it is now — and it is tempered now — by selection, is
a serious question? Probably the machine of Govern-
ment, materially altered since 1857, will go on till it is
again tried to the strain, and then will again be re-
constructed. That it is a powerful and effective machine,
every one knows. That it has fundamental defects no
true statesman will forget, even though his recollection of
the fact should compel him to lay his hand upon a thou-
sand special interests.

I believe that the connection of England and India,
viewed from the present time, represents a period of great

326 ENGUSH RULE AND

and real progress ; with drawbacks, it is true, but draw-
backs incident to human affairs generally, under like cir-
cumstances. It is certain that England, in her true men,
has infused a higher and more earnest vein into Indian life;
has opened up to India the foremost civilisation of the
present time; has secured to India strength in govern-
ment, and comparative peacefulness amid which the arts
of peace may grow. The tone of Anglo-Indian life also
lias undoubtedly improved ; the pictures presented of it in
days much later than those of Clive and Hastings would
not be fair representations of Anglo-Indian life at the
present time. There are, I repeat, and repeat strongly,
unquestionable drawbacks, and some of them have been
pointed out, in different ways, in the foregoing pages.
There are wrongs, petty oppressions, aims, reduced to arts,
of self-seeking. But if we view the picture as a whole,
and imagine a like picture of India under any other rule,
we may without any strain of conscience endeavour to do
our best, loyally, and in the face of our own times and
of history, to strengthen the rule of England in India.
France would have created a grander military empire;
would probably have welded the military races together
for aggressive war. England, when the worst that can be
said has been said of her rule, has certainly created a
powerful machinery for peace, and in many respects for
practical freedom. It is this machinery that India, for
the present, has an interest in strengthening and pre-
serving.

The advantages that England has reaped from her con-
nection with India are also great, but also, however, with
drawbacks. As a trading nation she has no longer, as Mr
Gold win Smith lately pointed out, any commercial advan-
tage that is not shared by all civilised nations ; and there-
in is one of the chief elements of the safety of her posi-
tion. She holds India, as she holds Gibraltar and Aden, as
the protector, not as the assailer of peaceful commerce. I
would like, if I knew how, to make the letters which

NATIVE OPINION IN INDIA. 327

record this view deep and distinct, 8ts an indication of tlie
policy at once of safety and freedom in future times. If
we stand on the insane policy of conquest, the policy will
be rudely questioned some day. If we stand on the
policy of doing the best that can be done for India, and of
securing to all nations the trade for which several nations
fought us, as for a special advantage, in old times, we
remove many of the grounds of contention. If we can
make friends of the people, we remove many more ; but
that unfortunately is what only a few Englishmen ever
attempt.

In naming what I believe to be one advantage to Eng-
land of her connection with India, my opinion will, i
know, be questioned, and I confess that it is not an
opinion at which I very readily arrived — I mean the im-
perial tone that accrues therefrom both to the acts of
government and to individual life. Men may go out
merely for careers, and come back without being any the
more intelligent, and with much harder and more relent-
less views of the responsibilities of the rich to the poor.
It is only very rarely that an Anglo-Indian ever again
takes the slightest interest in purely English, which, after
all, are world-wide, affairs. He may, as a sentiment, de-
liver a lecture, or, with a view to a place in Parliament,
talk of education and the Established Church or Noncon-
formity, but in reality his views are confined to "the
services," one of which has been to him the means of
making a great position. In such Anglo-Indians there is
little to interest England. They are worth much less to
her than the same number of respectable artisans, and at
times they are a baneful element in politics.

There are other Englishmen, who, going out at first
simply for careers, return very different men. Joseph
Hume and David Hare probably left England without
any clear idea of duty. Both, however, did high duty,
and assisted greatly to raise the standard of duty, in the
case of David Hare, chiefly in India, in that of Joseph

328 ENGLISH RULE AND

Hume, in England. These are but two of a number of
examples which might be given of how a stem faith and
earnest purpose may become intensified by a residence in
India, and how it may react on the life of England. An
oppressor by nature will become more oppressive by being
in India, but a lover of freedom by nature will probably
love freedom the more with every year of his life in India.
He will see more of the real meaning of those enduring
interests which no mere personal selfish aims can' affect.
He will assuredly see human history from a loftier stand-
ground. Lord Macaulay owed much to India, and Eng-
land owed much to that debt of Lord Macaulay's. Thus
the life of India and of England act and react upon each
other, with varied results, when considered in detail, but,
I think, with clearly beneficial results when viewed as a
whole. That is, England nationally, has a clear benefit in
the connection, if it is made to rest in justice. Of the
benefit to individuals, in the opening of careers, I have no
object in writing at present, though in a just and honour-
able career, even the individual advantage must recur to
the whole community.

When people talk of going to India for India's good,
they in most cases talk hjrpocritically. It is not easy to
go anywhere purely for the good of people of whom you
know nothing. But Englishmen have risen, are rising,
and will rise, into the duty of remaining for India's good.
We were attracted at first by the renown of India's
wealth. Our factories were for trade, for the benefit of
individual Englishmen. This fact was marked by aU manner
of means, and especially by the laws against interlopers,
including missionaries. We were to know nothing either
of politics or faith save as they bore on trade. When the
Company rose to sovereign power, whatever else it was, no
one can say it was in any respect unselfish. Lord Welles-
ley, looking upon the past of a trading company, and on the
fact of a company wielding sovereign power, said : " The
duties of sovereignty must be considered paramount to

AA TJVE OPINION IN INDIA, 329

mercantile interests, prejudices, and profit. In time of
peace the happiness of its subjects, the permanent im-
provement of its dominions, the dignity, purity, and vigour
of its government, must take precedence of commercial
considerations." And again : " The civil servants of the
Company can no longer be considered as the servants of a
commercial concern. They are, in fact, the ministers and
ofl&cers of a powerful sovereign. They are required to dis-
charge the functions of magistrates, judges, ambassadors,
and governors of provinces in all the complicated and
extensive relations of those sacred trusts and exalted
stations, and under peculiar circumstances which greatly
enhance the solemnity of every public obligation, and
aggravate the difl&culty of every public charge." These
words were written when Englishmen were first gaining
perceptions of the real and vast change in the relation of
England and India ; and the policy of Lord Wellesley was
that of a statesman to whom India has owed much. It
waa a policy worthy of the best of the Romans. Edmund
Burke and Charles James Fox, however, rose higher than
this. Lord Wellesley saw England's executive duties at
their highest and noblest. Fox and Burke went deeper
than executive duties — to the kernels of truths, to the
relations of men to men, as well as of men to governments ;
and their words and their political action in the House
of Commons will remain among the noblest charters that
ever England gave to India. France, by the lips of
Mirabeau might have made more fervid and thrilling
assertions of freedom. But nowhere in the world in the
years from 1789 till the principles of 1789 passed away
could there have been produced anything in view of India
to surpass in nobleness and value what Fox and Burke said
and did during the earlier of those years. The trial of
Warren Hastings was marked by many errors on the part
of the prosecutors — by much personal enmity, and many
unworthy aims. The enmity to Clive was even more so ;
but there was at that time a line drawn beyond which

330 NA TIVE OPINION IN INDIA.

even genius of the first order must not pass ; and what was
done then has never since been pushed out of sight.

Returning to 1877, the foremost duties before an English-
man in India seem to consist in making friends of the
people by justice, fair-play, and courtesy ; by developing
trade; by assisting individuals to usefulness in life; by
upholding all truths, religious or otherwise, in the face of
all falsehoods ; and by striving to raise flowers in the place
of weeds in social life. We may be assured that our
first means of defending India will be found — not on, and
certainly not beyond, the frontiers, but in India itself.
We shall find those means in various ways; but the key to
them all is, that they shall rest on a fair consideration for
the just wishes, and even for the errors and prejudices, of
the people. Englishmen have caused much suffering in
India. But if India has suffered, England too has given
some noble and generous blood to India.^ Leaving, there-
fore, the things that are behind, and pressing on to those
that are before, it is possible, I think, on right and just
principles, even yet to establish an empire which may
resist a hundred storms, and win the cordial affection of
the people in future times.

^ Appendix VIII.

APPENDIX.

No. L—Page 43.

The identity of the gates recovered with those removed from
Somn&th was questioned at the time in the sharp satire directed
against Lord Ellenborough, but I do not know any sound reason
for doubting that the gates I saw at Agra were those taken away
by Mahmoud of Ghuznee.

No. ll.^Page 46.

It should not be forgotten that the passes of Afghanistan and
the co-operation of the Afghans were essential to Napoleon's
scheme for the invasion of India ; and that when Lord Wellesley
in the year 1800 sent Captain Malcolm on the famous embas«(y
to Teheran — the first marked indication of the new frontier
policy— it was with especial view to Napoleon's designs. A
little earlier Lord Wellesley had planned an attack on the Mauri-
tius, and in 1800 he carried out that memorable invasion of
Eg3rpt by a force from India ; an event which may perhaps rank
in political importance with the battle of the Nile as proving to
Napoleon that the invasion of India, while India was governed by
a man like Lord Wellesley, would be a desperate enterprisa The
French had assailed England in several different directions with a
view to India ; — ^by means of Tippoo, whom in 1799 we conquered ;
by invading Egypt, which was even then (without either a Suez
Canal or an Overland Route) the key to the operations of a ruler
who, powerful on land, was imi)otent on sea ; and finally, by a very
subtle influence, directed to Persia and Afghanistan. There can
hardly be a doubt that with Lord Wellesley at Calcutta we should

332 APPENDIX.

have defied and defeated even Napoleon. How tliorouglily he
grasped the whole question with the intuition of genius, and pro-
vided for every possible chance, and even for what he deemed im-
possibilities, his recently published dispatches show. Instend of
waiting for Napoleon to attempt the march from Egypt to Afghan-
istan, Lord Wellesley, with a daring equal to Napoleon*s own, sent
the force referred to above to dispute the first step of the invasion
in Egypt, and he provided for failure there by influencing Persia
and Afghanistan. He said : " This French state actually holds
possession of the person and nominal authority of the Mogul ;
maintains the most efficient anny of regular native infantry, and
the most powerful artillery now existing in India, with the excep-
tion of the Company's troops, and exercises a considerable influ-
ence on the neighbouring states, from the banks of the Indus to the
confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges. . . . Nor could an in-
strument of destruction more skilfully adapted to wound the heart
of the British Empire in India be presented to the vindictive
hand of the first Consul of France." That both Lord Wellesley
and his brother, the future Duke of Wellington, were impressed
with a belief that the invasion of India from the north west was
practicable, cannot be disputed ; and though they would have met
it with high hearts and every hope of success, we must bear in
mind that the rule of England at that time was in exceptionally
able hands, and that if Lord Auckland had been in the plac^e of
Lord Wellesley, the entire conditions would have been diflferent.
That Napoleon could have marched from the Caspian to the
Khyber we may deem impossible if the march had of necessity
been through enemies, and with Nelson triumphant on sea. If,
however, France could have held the Mediterranean, and Persia
and Afghanistan had been conciliated, and the Indian princes in-
fluenced by the able and skilful French officers employed for that
purpose, and, above all, if Lord Auckland, and not Lord Wellesley,
had been Governor General, the face of the world might, as
Napoleon delighted to say of many of his operations, have been
changed from the day the French landed in Alexandria. Welles-
ley in India and Nelson on the Mediterranean destroyed Napo-
leon's chance of attempting to repeat for France the splendid
drama that Clive had achieved for England. It will be perceived,
however, that a "frontier policy" was necessary, and that the
invasion of India was by no means the chimera that some people
would have us suppose. To defy the danger is one thing. To
deny the existence of the danger is to increase it many fold.

APPENDIX. 333

No. Ill — Pa^« 63.

The rumour of Yakoob Beg^s death was afterwards contra-
dicted, but incorrectly so. The latest intelligence up to the time
these lines go to press is that the late Ameer's son, Beg Kuli Beg,
has been defeated, the Dadkhwah's son killed, and the Dadkhwah
himself taken prisoner.

No. TV.^Page 108.

I was much struck by the way in which some officers, whose
memories went back for as long as perhaps thirty years, and were
continuations of other memories, spoke of these frontier soldiers
of adventure. Of Avitabile, and his unscrupulous seizure of any
person, male or female, or any property necessary to his interest
or personal gratification, there are many, and I should say, authen-
tic stories.

No. V. — Page 134.

Mr Fawcett made this strong statement at Salisbury (Septem-
ber 9) this year : — " Our present income-tax of 2d. in the pound
yields an annual revenue of about four millions ; an income-tax
of the same amount when imposed in India did not produce more
than ^400,000. Not only, therefore, is the income-tax a most
feeble resource for adding to the revenue of India, but there are
such manifold abuses connected with its collection, and the tax is
so entirely unsuited to the Indian people, that nothing but ex-
treme necessity can justify a resort to it So strongly was this
felt by Lord Canning, one of the best Governor Generals that
India ever had, that he once declared he would far sooner run the
risk of reducing the European army in India by one half than
incur the danger which might result from the discontent which
the imposition of an income-tax would produce." Mr Faw-
cett also said :— " In a volume issued by the India Office in
1873 it is said, 'In the 14 districts of Madras there are said to be
43,000 tanks, all of native origin, with probably 30,000 miles of
embankments and 300,000 separate masonry works. The revenue

334 APPENDIX.

dependent on tanks was ;f i,5oo,cxx>, yet in 1853 not one new
one had been made in Madras by the English, though many had
been allowed to fall into disrepair/ Again, it is stated that under
native rule, by well and canal irrigation, 'the district of Mooltan,
between the Sutlej and Chenab, where rain hardly ever falls, is
converted into a succession of beautiful gardens, shaded by date
pahns.' "

No. VL— Pa^« 218.

!Mr Eden recently said of Lord Northbrook : " Some little time
antecedent to Lord Northbrook's arrival, there had arisen from some
cause or other a condition of coldness and restraint in the relations
between Europeans and natives, and a general want of mutual confi-
dence and good feeling, which was much deplored and regretted by
thinking men of both classes. But I observed that year by year
after Lord Northbrook's arrival this state of things vanished
away ; and I believe that this was mainly due to the personal
example of courtesy and consideration which Lord Northbrook
sot in all matters of communication and intercourse with natives.
I know, and I can say it most confidently, that the educated
native gentlemen of Bengal were much impressed and influenced
by the unvarying courtesy with which he treated them, and with
the calm, patient justice with which he considered all matters
connected with them."

No. VII.— Pa^« 293.

After this chapter was in type I fortunately mentioned it
to Mr Wilson, proprietor and editor of the Indian Daily JV^^nu
(now in England), who kindly sent me a note, referring to an
Indian worker. Baboo Sasipada Banerjea Mr Wilson wrote :
"Baboo Sasipada Banerjee is, I believe, or rather I should
say was, a Brahmin by birth, and resides at Baranagore, a vil-
lage a few miles north of Calcutta. He is yet a yoimg man.
When I first became acquainted with him, he was engaged in
earnest endeavours to improve the character of his neighbours

APPENDIX. 335

and benefit the village. The jute-mill of the Borneo Company had
brought to the village numbers of men who were rapidly becoming
* mill hands/ but who were very ignorant. Sasipada was, I think,
at this time a member of the so-called reformers of the £rahmo
Somaj, of which Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen is the recognised
leader. But he is not a man to be held in iron-bound creeds.
In opposition to the feelings and traditions of his race, he had
the sagacity to perceive that future generations must be affected
for good through their mothers. His means were limited. He
was only a clerk in a magistrate's court ; but he resolved to em-
ploy the hours not required for official duty in useful work, lie
laid his plans before the managers of the mills and other friends
who sympathised with him. Schools were started for infants and
for adults. To the latter he devoted his evenings, frequently not
reaching homo till near midnight He started girls' schools, and
the idea of girls' schools is, or was, a very revolutionary one in
India. He established an improvement committee in the village,
and was laying the axe so vigorously, albeit very unostentatiously,
to the root of many long-standing evils, that some of his fellow-
villagers, including members of his own family — taking that term
in a wider sense than our English one of his own household —
began to take alarm. He became subject to all sorts of opposi-
tion and persecution. He was put out of caste, intercourse with
his fellows was denied him. His house was defiled at the instiga-
tion of men who professed to be not only gentlemen but religious.
He showed no resentment Greater trials were in store for him.
His wife, devotedly attached to him, and taught by him the differ-
ence between real religion and ignorant idolatry and worse sham,
sympathised with and encouraged him. The time of dire neces-
sity was coming upon his wife, when she must experience the
sorrow that precedes the compensating joy of maternity. The
village doctor would not, or dare not, attend the wife of an out-
caste ; no midwife would or dare render her mercenary aid any
more than she dare assist from sympathy. Here, it was said, we
shall touch Sasipada to the quick, and bring him to bend beneath
the yoke of Hindooism. Sasipada felt that in this extremity, as
in others, he must trust in God and the intelligence which He had
given him. He made the best use of his time in the study of a
few physiological and medical works, and performed most satis-
factorily the duties of family accoucheur. One day while he was
at his daily duty some seven or eight miles away, his wife was
taken from his house at Baranagore, he knew not whither or by

336 APPENDIX.

whom ; and of course none of the villagers likely to be concerned
in the affair would give him any information. However, he was
not to be baffled ; and love, which laughs at locksmiths, somehow
in this case opened a communication. Sasipada found that his wife
had been spirited 500 miles away to Benares. He found her and
brought her home. Some of these facts became known to European
gentlemen in Calcutta, and one of the papers expressed itself in a
style that was not calculated to flatter the self-love of Sasipada's
persecutors. But he had almost beaten or wearied them out him-
self, and after this they modified their animosity. Sasipada had
conversed with English gentlemen of institutions in England
for working men. He had also read of various organisations of
labour, <bc. He wished to visit England to see these in operation.
His work attracted the notice of Miss Carpenter on her first visit
to India, and one of the results was an arrangement that Baboo
Sasipada should pay a visit to England. There was some diffi-
culty about it. Native gentlemen — even Brahmins— had been
known to commit the iniquity of crossing the sea against the in-
junctions of their Shasters. He went, however, and Mrs Baner-
jee accompanied him. They were the guests of Miss Carpenter,
and a son was bom at Bristol and was named * Albion.' Though
this visit was not regarded with favour, the ' enemy ' had seen suffi-
cient Some thought he might perhaps return a Christian ; but I
am not aware that he has ever been considered one, or has pro-
fessed to be so. He is a Brahmist, and most assuredly a ' reformer.'
Though he belongs to the * Progressive Brahmos,* he does not
accept implicitly the doctrines of Keshub Baboo ; nor do I sup-
pose he will accept those of any sect, of whatever denomination.
Amongst other things resulting from his visit to England was the
publication of a little work in the Bengalee language, upon the
model of the British Worhnan, though, of course, at an infinite
distance. The circulation has reached 8000 or 10,000 copies.
Two or three years ago, the great sorrow of his life fell upon
Sasipada. His wife, who had been the faithful partner of his suf-
ferings and persecutions, whose devotion and affection sustained
him in the most trying periods of his life, was taken from him.
The management of the little paper for working men necessarily
devolves largely upon him, but he has occasionally to be absent
on duty, and on one such occasion a letter or paragraph based on
a fact, though the fact was not accurately expressed, was inserted.
His opponents charged him with criminal defamation, their object
being to put upon him the indignity of imprisonment They

APPENDIX. 337

managed to get him convicted, and the native magistrate sentenced
him to a heavy fine and to three months' imprisonment. Notice of
appeal was given, but bail was refused, an act of malice that was
-defeated by a prompt representation to the sessions judge— an
Englishman. On appeal the sentence as to imprisonment was
reversed, and the fine was reduced to a comparatively small
sum."

• No. YHL—Pagt 330.

Mr Wilson, in the course of conversation also said, with reference
to the advantages and disadvantages of the English occupation of
India : *' Yes, the very same subject arose in conversation at Delhi
on the occasion of the proclamation of the Empire. One of those
present said it was true that some men made fortunes ; that many
received high pay and gained distinction ; but we also gave to India
some of our noblest blood, and paid for our occupation in lives
that could ill be spared. ' The graveyards of India,' he said, ' suffi-
ciently attest that. Whenever I visit Delhi, I never seem to have
done my duty without going to the Cashmere Gate and to the
cemetery outside, where lie the bones of John Nicholson and of
many who fell with him. But it is not alone with the lives of the
strong that we pay the price of our occupation. The other day I
did my usual pilgrimage to the tomb of Nicholson, and what else
did I see ? On every side of the grave of the great man there
were melancholy memorials of many who might have become
great also under other conditions. Within a yard or two of
Nicholson's tomb there is a newly erected stone with the inscrip-
tion 'Sacred to the memory of our Sonny Boy' (a native phrase »

"bright" or "golden '0, * who died aged two years.' Again not

more distant, ' In afifectionate remembrance of , daughter

of Captain and Mrs , aged one year and seven months.'

These and many more very recent monuments of similar pur-
port) attest in suitable inscriptions how parental hopes have been
blighted, how passionate sorrow bewails the exactions of an Indian
career. The young blossoms of hope scarcely bloom ere they
droop and die : the young tendrils just learn to twine themselves
round the hearts which they lacerate on being torn away. The

Y

338 APPENDIX.

bereaved parents leave a sad memorial over the graves which the
instability of their position often forbids the possibilily of their
ever visiting again. These leave sad memories ; and are a part of
the price we pay for the occupation of India.' A medical gentle-
man present said : ' I am glad to hear yon say that It has been
before me often in my experience, but I have never heard it so
expressed before. I thank you much for saying that' "

THE END.

I RINTRD BV BALLANTYNB, HANSON AND CO.
BDINBUKGH AND LONDON

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